s and attack their neighbours, and it was
to this object that their most strenuous efforts were directed.

As early as 1475 Ivan III., the grandfather of Ivan the Terrible, sent a
delegate to Venice to seek out for him an architect who, in addition to
his own craft, knew how to make guns; and in due course appeared in
the Kremlin a certain Muroli, called Aristotle by his contemporaries on
account of his profound learning. He undertook "to build churches and
palaces, to cast big bells and cannons, to fire off the said cannons,
and to make every sort of castings very cunningly"; and for the exercise
of these various arts it was solemnly stipulated in a formal document
that he should receive the modest salary of ten roubles monthly. With
regard to the military products, at least, the Venetian faithfully
fulfilled his contract, and in a short time the Tsar had the
satisfaction of possessing a "cannon-house," subsequently dignified with
the name of "arsenal." Some of the natives learned the foreign art, and
exactly a century later (1856) a Russian, or at least a Slav, called
Tchekhof, produced a famous "Tsar-cannon," weighing as much as 96,000
lbs. The connection thus established with the mechanical arts of the
West was always afterwards maintained, and we find frequent notices of
the fact in contemporary writers. In the reign of the grandfather of
Peter the Great, for example, two paper-works were established by an
Italian; and velvet for the Tsar and his Boyars, gold brocades for
ecclesiastical vestments, and rude kinds of glass for ordinary purposes
were manufactured under the august patronage of the enlightened ruler.
His son Alexis went a good many steps further, and scandalised
his God-fearing orthodox subjects by his love of foreign heretical
inventions. It was in his German suburb of Moscow that young Peter,
who was to be crowned "the Great," made his first acquaintance with the
useful arts of the West.

When the great reformer came to the throne he found in his Tsardom,
besides many workshops, some ten foundries, all of which were under
orders "to cast cannons, bombs, and bullets, and to make arms for the
service of the State." This seemed to him only a beginning, especially
for the mining and iron industry, in which he was particularly
interested. By importing foreign artificers and placing at their
disposal big estates, with numerous serfs, in the districts where
minerals were plentiful, and by carefully stipulat