What is this, and what have we lived to see, O Russians? What are we doing now? We are burying Peter the Great! Is it not a dream? Not a vision of the night? Oh, what a real sorrow! Oh, what certain bitter reality! Contrary to all expectations and hopes he has ended his life who has been the cause of our innumerable benefactions and joys, who has resuscitated Russia as if from the dead, and has raised it to great power and glory, nay, has begot it and brought it up, he the true father of his country, whom for his deserts all the good sons of Russia wished to be immortal, and whom, on account of his youth and bodily strength, they had hoped to see many years alive. O dire calamity! He has ended his life just as he was beginning to live after his labours, unrest, sorrows, calamities, after so many and varied deaths. We see well how we have angered Thee, O Lord, and how long we have tempted Thy long-suffering! O we unfortunate and unworthy people! O the infinitude of our sins! He who does not see that is blind. He who sees it and does not confess is turned to stone in his heartlessness. But why should we increase our woes and heart-pain, which we ought rather attempt to allay? But if we are to mention his great talents, acts and works we shall only be stung more severely by the loss of our good man, and we shall sob aloud. Only in a lethargy, or some deathlike sleep, could we at all forget our so sad loss. What a great and what a good man we have lost! O Russia, this Samson of yours came to you when no one in the world had expected him, and when he appeared the whole world marvelled. He found you weak in power, and to conform with his name he made you of stone and adamant. He found an army dangerous at home, weak in the field and scorned by the foe, and he gave his country a useful army that is terrible to the enemy, and everywhere renowned and glorious. He defended his country, and at the same time returned to it the lands that had been taken away from it, and increased it by the acquisition of new provinces. When he crushed those who rose against us, he at the same time broke the strength of our ill-wishers and subdued their spirits, and, closing up the lips of envy, compelled the whole world to proclaim glorious things of himself. O Russia, he was your first Japheth, who had accomplished a deed unheard of in your annals, having introduced the building and sailing of ships. He gave you a new fleet that, to the wonderment of the world and surpassing all expectation, was in no way inferior to much older fleets, and he opened for you a path to all the ends of the earth, and spread your power and glory to the extreme corners of the ocean, to the limits of your usefulness, to the limits which justice had placed; and the might of your dominion, which heretofore was firm on land, he has now made strong and permanent upon the sea.