cess Natalia Petrowna, the third of
Catharine's children, died a short time after her father, and the bodies
of both parent and child were interred together at the same funeral
ceremony, which was conducted with the utmost possible pomp and parade.
The obsequies were so protracted that it was more than six weeks from the
death of the Czar before the bodies were finally committed to the tomb;
and a volume might be filled with an account of the processions, the
ceremonies, the prayers, the chantings, the costumes, the plumes and
trappings of horses, the sledges decked in mourning, the requiems sung,
the salvos of artillery fired, and all the various other displays and
doings connected with the occasion.

Thus was brought to an end the earthly personal career of Peter the
Great. He well deserves his title, for he was certainly one of the
greatest as well as one of the most extraordinary men that ever lived.
Himself half a savage, he undertook to civilize twenty millions of
people, and he pursued the work during his whole lifetime through
dangers, difficulties, and discouragements which it required a surprising
degree of determination and energy to surmount. He differs from other
great military monarchs that have appeared from time to time in the
world's history, and by their exploits have secured for themselves the
title of The Great, in this, that, while they acquired their renown by
conquests gained over foreign nations, which, in most cases, after the
death of their conquerors, lapsed again into their original condition,
leaving no permanent results behind, the triumphs which Peter achieved
were the commencement of a work of internal improvement and reform which
is now, after the lapse of a century and a half since he commenced it,
still going on. The work is, in fact, advancing at the present day with
perhaps greater and more successful progress than ever before.

Notwithstanding the stern severity of Peter's character, the terrible
violence of his passions, and the sort of savage grandeur which marked
all his great determinations and plans, there was a certain vein of
playfulness running through his mind; and, when he was in a jocose or
merry humor, no one could be more jocose and merry than he. The interest
which he took in the use of tools, and in working with his own hands at
various handicrafts--his notion of entering the army as a drummer, the
navy as a midshipman, and rising gravely, by regular promotion i