The dawn of the eighteenth century saw the thrones of France and Russia occupied by two of the most remarkable sovereigns who ever wore a crown--Louis XIV., the "Sun-King," whose splendours dazzled Europe, and whose power held it in awe; and Peter I. of Russia, whose destructive sword swept Europe from Sweden to the Dardenelles, and whose clever brain laid sure the foundation of his country's greatness. Each of these Royal rivals dwarfed all other fellow-monarchs as the sun pales the stars; and yet it would scarcely have been possible to find two men more widely different in all save their passion for power and their love of woman, which alone they had in common. Of the two, Peter is unquestionably to-day the more arresting, dominating figure. Although nearly two centuries have gone since he made his exit from the world, we can still picture him in his pride, towering a head higher than the tallest of his courtiers, swart of face, "as if he had been born in Africa," with his black, close-curling hair, his bold, imperious eyes, his powerful, well-knit frame--"the muscles and stature of a Goliath"--a kingly figure, with majesty in every movement. We see him, too, wilfully discarding the kingliness with which nature had so liberally dowered him--now receiving ambassadors "in a short dressing-gown, below which his bare legs were exposed, a thick nightcap, lined with linen, on his head, his stockings dropped down over his slippers"--now walking through the Copenhagen streets grotesque in a green cap, a brown overcoat with horn buttons, worsted stockings full of darns, and dirty, cobbled shoes; and again carousing, red of face and loud of voice, with his meanest subjects in some low tavern. As the mood seizes him he plays the rôle of fireman for hours together; goes carol-singing in his sledge, and reaps his harvest of coppers from the houses of his subjects; rides a hobby-horse at a village fair, and shrieks with laughter until he falls off; or plies saw and plane in a shipbuilding yard, sharing the meals and drinking bouts of his fellow-workmen. The French Ambassador, Campredon, wrote of him in 1725:--"It is utterly impossible at the present moment to approach the Tsar on serious subjects; he is altogether given up to his amusements, which consist in going every day to the principal houses in the town with a suite of 200 persons, musicians and so forth, who sing songs on every sort of subject, and amuse themselves by eating and drinking at the expense of the persons they visit." "He never passed a single day without being the worse for drink," Baron Pöllnitz tells us; and his drinking companions were usually chosen from the most degraded of his subjects, of both sexes, with whom he consorted on the most familiar terms.