han by bribing his ministers and his family, and by a
ready performance of the most humiliating acts of personal submission. His
conduct towards all his enemies--that is, towards all his neighbours--was
dictated by a similar policy; he admitted their rights, but he took every
safe opportunity to disregard them. So far did he carry the semblance of
submission, that the Muscovites were for some years disgusted with the
slavish spirit of their prince. His lofty ambition was concealed by rare
prudence and caution, and sustained by remarkable firmness and pertinacity
of purpose. He never took a step in advance from which he was forced to
recede. He had the art to combine with many of his enemies against one,
and thus overthrew them all in succession. It was by such means that he
cast off the Tartar yoke--curbed the power of Poland--humbled that of
Lithuania, subdued Novgorod, Tver, Pskoff, Kazan, and Viatka--reannexed
Veira, Ouglitch, Rezan, and other appanages to the crown, and added nearly
twenty thousand square miles with four millions of subjects to his
dominions. He framed a code of laws--improved the condition of his
army--established a police in every part of his empire--protected and
extended commerce--supported the church, but kept it in subjection to
himself; but was at all times arbitrary, often unjust and cruel, and
throughout his whole life, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employed
to compass his ends.

One of the most successful strokes of his policy, was his marriage with
Sophia, daughter of the Emperor Paleologos, who had been driven from
Constantinople by the Turks. This alliance, which he sought with great
assiduity, not only added to the dignity of his government at home, but
opened the way for an intercourse on equal terms with the greatest princes
of Europe. It was Sophia who dissuaded him from submitting to the
degrading ceremonial which had been observed on receiving the Tartar
ambassadors at Moscow--and to her he probably owed the feelings of
personal dignity which he evinced in the latter part of his reign. It was
this alliance that at once placed the sovereigns of Russia at the head of
the whole Greek church; whose dignitaries, driven from the stately dome of
St Sophia in Byzantium, found shelter in the humbler temple raised by the
piety of their predecessors, some ages before, in the wilds of Muscovy,
and more than repaid the hospitality they received by diffusing a love of
learning amongst a