racter has necessarily been represented in
various points of view and in various colours by his biographers. Of
him, however, it can scarcely be said, that

The evil which men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones.

With the exception of a few foreign writers, who have generally
compiled their memoirs from polluted sources, the reverse of the
aphorism may be applied to Peter. His memory, among his countrymen,
who ought to be the best judges, and of whom he was at once the
scourge and the benefactor, is held in the highest veneration, and is
consecrated in their history and their public monuments to everlasting
fame. The magnificent equestrian statue, erected by Catharine II.; the
waxen figure of Peter in the museum of the Academy founded by himself;
the dress, the sword, and the hat, which he wore at the battle of
Pultowa, the last pierced through with a ball: the horse that he rode
in that battle; the trousers, worsted stockings, shoes, and cap, which
he wore at Zaandam, all in the same apartment; his two favourite dogs,
his turning-lathe and tools, with specimens of his workmanship; the
iron bar which he forged with his own hand at Olonitz; the Little
Grandsire, so carefully preserved, as the first germ of the Russian
navy; and the wooden hut in which he lived while superintending the
first foundation of Petersburg;--these, and a thousand other tangible
memorials, all preserved with the utmost care, speak in most
intelligible language the opinion which the Russians hold of _the
Father of his Country_.

* * * * *

THE NATURALIST.

* * * * *

THE DODO.

Every reader of popular natural history must recollect the figure of
this extraordinary bird; although he may not be aware that it is
considered to have become extinct towards the end of the seventeenth
or beginning of the eighteenth century. The conditions of this
disappearance are self-evident.[15] Imagine a bird of the gallinaceous
(_gallus_, cock, or pheasant) tribe, considerably larger than a
turkey, and consequently adapted for food, totally incapable of
flying, and so unwieldy as to be easily run down, and it must be quite
obvious that such a bird could not long continue to exist in any
country to which mankind extended their dominion. This will account
for its being found only in those islands of the Indian Ocean which,
on their being first discovered by E