The French monarchy was to him what the Roman republic was to Hannibal, what the Ottoman power was to Scanderbeg, what the Southron domination was to Wallace. Religion gave her sanction to that intense and unquenchable animosity. Hundreds of Calvinistic preachers proclaimed that the same power which had set apart Samson from the womb to be the scourge of the Philistine, and which had called Gideon from the threshing-floor to smite the Midianite, had raised up William of Orange to be the champion of all free nations and of all pure Churches; nor was this notion without influence on his own mind. To the confidence which the heroic fatalist placed in his high destiny and in his sacred cause is to be partly attributed his singular indifference to danger. He had a great work to do; and till it was done nothing could harm him. Therefore it was that, in spite of the prognostications of physicians, he recovered from maladies which seemed hopeless, that bands of assassins conspired in vain against his life, that the open skiff to which he trusted himself on a starless night, amid raging waves, and near a treacherous shore, brought him safe to land, and that, on twenty fields of battle, the cannon balls passed him by to right and left. The ardor and perseverance with which he devoted himself to his mission have scarcely any parallel in history. [Illustration: PETER THE GREAT.] PETER THE GREAT, CZAR OF RUSSIA. BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. [Creator of the modern Russian empire, born 1672; died 1725. Shortly after assuming the throne of a nation of barbarians, and vigorously repressing internal disturbances, he began that series of reforms by which he hoped to civilize his people. He spent seventeen months traveling and studying the arts and sciences, which had made other nations great. On returning to Russia he enforced many revolutionary changes with the strictness of a despot, and introduced institutions before unknown to Russia. He built St. Petersburg in the marshes at the mouth of the Neva, and displayed extraordinary energy in recasting the whole military and civil polity of the nation. He displayed marked ability as a soldier in his wars with his neighbors, but his genius shone most brightly in civil administration, though he never ceased to be a barbarian and the sternest of despots.]