THE GREATEST MAN (CAESAR
EXCEPTED) WHO EVER _ROSE_ TO THE SUPREME POWER, PETER WAS THE GREATEST
MAN EVER _BORN_ TO IT.

IT was singular enough that my introduction to the notice of Peter
the Great and Philip le Debonnaire should have taken place under
circumstances so far similar that both those illustrious personages were
playing the part rather of subjects than of princes. I cannot, however,
conceive a greater mark of the contrast between their characters than
the different motives and manners of the incognitos severally assumed.

Philip, in a scene of low riot and debauch, hiding the Jupiter under the
Silenus,--wearing the mask only for the licentiousness it veiled,
and foregoing the prerogative of power, solely for indulgence in the
grossest immunities of vice.

Peter, on the contrary, parting with the selfishness of state in order
to watch the more keenly over the interests of his people, only omitting
to preside in order to examine, and affecting the subject only to learn
the better the duties of the prince. Had I leisure, I might here pause
to point out a notable contrast, not between the Czar and the Regent,
but between Peter the Great and Louis le Grand: both creators of a new
era,--both associated with a vast change in the condition of two mighty
empires. There ceases the likeness and begins the contrast: the blunt
simplicity of Peter, the gorgeous magnificence of Louis; the sternness
of a legislator for barbarians, the clemency of an idol of courtiers.
One the victorious defender of his country,--a victory solid, durable,
and just; the other the conquering devastator of a neighbouring
people,--a victory, glittering, evanescent, and dishonourable. The one,
in peace, rejecting parade, pomp, individual honours, and transforming
a wilderness into an empire: the other involved in ceremony, and throned
on pomp; and exhausting the produce of millions to pamper the bloated
vanity of an individual. The one a fire that burns, without enlightening
beyond a most narrow circle, and whose lustre is tracked by what it
ruins, and fed by what it consumes; the other a luminary, whose light,
not so dazzling in its rays, spreads over a world, and is noted, not for
what it destroys, but for what it vivifies and creates.

I cannot say that it was much to my credit that, while I thought
the Regent's condescension towards me natural enough, I was a little
surprised by the favour shown me by the Czar. At Paris, I had _seemed_
to