s visit. Peter had been in Berlin more than once before; but almost
always in a succinct rapid condition; never with his "Court" about
him till now. This is his last, and by far his greatest, appearance in
Berlin.

Such a transit, of the Barbaric semi-fabulous Sovereignties, could not
but be wonderful to everybody there. It evidently struck Wilhelmina's
fancy, now in her ninth year, very much. What her little Brother did in
it, or thought of it, I nowhere find hinted; conclude only that it would
remain in his head too, visible occasionally to the end of his life.
Wilhelmina's Narrative, very loose, dateless or misdated, plainly wrong
in various particulars, has still its value for us: human eyes, even a
child's, are worth something, in comparison to human want-of-eyes,
which is too frequent in History-books and elsewhere!--Czar Peter is now
forty-five, his Czarina Catherine about thirty-one. It was in 1698
that he first passed this way, going towards Saardam and practical
Ship-building: within which twenty years what a spell of work done!
Victory of Pultawa is eight years behind him; [27th June, 1709.]
victories in many kinds are behind him: by this time he is to be
reckoned a triumphant Czar; and is certainly the strangest mixture of
heroic virtue and brutish Samoeidic savagery the world at any time had.

It was Sunday, 19th September, 1717, when the Czar arrived in Berlin.
Being already sated with scenic parades, he had begged to be spared
all ceremony; begged to be lodged in Monbijou, the Queen's little
Garden-Palace with river and trees round it, where he hoped to be
quietest. Monbijou has been set apart accordingly; the Queen, not in
the benignest humor, sweeping all her crystals and brittle things away;
knowing the manners of the Muscovites. Nor in the way of ceremony was
there much: King and Queen drove out to meet him; rampart-guns gave
three big salvos, as the Czarish Majesty stept forth. "I am glad to see
you, my Brother Friedrich," said Peter, in German, his only intelligible
language; shaking hands with the Brother Majesty, in a cordial human
manner. The Queen he, still more cordially, "would have kissed;"
but this she evaded, in some graceful effective way. As to the
Czarina,--who, for OBSTETRIC and other reasons, of no moment to us, had
stayed in Wesel all the time he was in France,--she followed him now at
two days' distance; not along with him, as Wilhelmina has it. Wilhelmina
says, she kissed the Queen