ial dignity was thereby
impaired. When he determined to build a new capital on a Finnish
marsh, inhabited chiefly by wildfowl, he did not content himself with
exercising his autocratic power in a comfortable arm chair. Like the
Greek gods, he went down from his Olympus and took his place in the
ranks of ordinary mortals, superintending the work with his own eyes,
and taking part in it with his own hands. If he was as arbitrary and
oppressive as any of the pyramid-building Pharaohs, he could at least
say in self-justification that he did not spare himself any more than
his people, but exposed himself freely to the discomforts and dangers
under which thousands of his fellow-labourers succumbed.

In reading the account of Peter's life, written in part by his own pen,
we can easily understand how the piously Conservative section of his
subjects failed to recognise in him the legitimate successor of the
orthodox Tsars. The old Tsars had been men of grave, pompous demeanour,
deeply imbued with the consciousness of their semi-religious dignity.
Living habitually in Moscow or its immediate neighbourhood, they spent
their time in attending long religious services, in consulting with
their Boyars, in being present at ceremonious hunting-parties, in
visiting the monasteries, and in holding edifying conversations with
ecclesiastical dignitaries or revered ascetics. If they undertook a
journey, it was probably to make a pilgrimage to some holy shrine; and,
whether in Moscow or elsewhere, they were always protected from contact
with ordinary humanity by a formidable barricade of court ceremonial.
In short, they combined the characters of a Christian monk and of an
Oriental potentate.

Peter was a man of an entirely different type, and played in the calm,
dignified, orthodox, ceremonious world of Moscow the part of the bull in
the china shop, outraging ruthlessly and wantonly all the time-honored
traditional conceptions of propriety and etiquette. Utterly regardless
of public opinion and popular prejudices, he swept away the old
formalities, avoided ceremonies of all kinds, scoffed at ancient usage,
preferred foreign secular books to edifying conversations, chose profane
heretics as his boon companions, travelled in foreign countries, dressed
in heretical costume, defaced the image of God and put his soul in
jeopardy by shaving off his beard, compelled his nobles to dress and
shave like himself, rushed about the Empire as if goaded o