After dinner we were taken on board the Czar’s vessel. The Czarina and her ladies sought the cabin, but the Czar remained with us in the open air, laughing and joking. A strong wind was blowing, which in two hours became a gale, and the Czar himself took the helm and showed the utmost skill in working a ship as well as huge strength of body. After being tossed about for seven hours we at last reached the port of Cronstot, where the Czar left us with the words: “Good night, gentlemen. I fear I have carried the jest too far.” The next day I returned to St. Petersburg, and was lodged in the Summer Palace so as to be near the Czar. The Czar sent for me early in the morning, and discoursed for two hours on various buildings he wished me to design. He went into every detail, and soon showed me that he was as skilled an architect as he was a sailor. He also talked on various other subjects, including theology, mechanics, music, painting, the English Navy, and the German Army. England, he said, was his model as far as the Navy was concerned, Germany for the Army, and France for architecture. At the same time he was not disposed slavishly to follow any particular models, and force on his people those details of any system which might not be in concord with the genius of the Russian character. It is undeniable that the Germans have far the best system of military discipline, he said, but it would be quite impossible to get Russian soldiers to act with the mathematical precision of the Prussians. “I adopt the system as far as I can, and adapt it to my material. That is why I get as many Scotch officers as I can, and English architects, because it is difficult to make a Frenchman understand that Russia isn’t France, and that a Russian workman must work in his own way.” I had not been in St. Petersburg long before I realized that X----’s forebodings are baseless. He is right in saying that the Czar is ambitious. He is right in saying that he is actuated by restlessness, if by restlessness he means a ceaseless and indefatigable energy. He is right in saying that the Czar’s materials are bad and scanty and that the Czar thus had to make bricks without straw. He is right in saying that the Russians are fundamentally conservative and regard all reforms with distrust.