Two boys were together crowned as Czars of Russia, at Moscow, by the Greek patriarch, on the 15th of June, 1682. They were brothers, and one of them soon yielded to the superior energy of the other, and resigning his share of the government, left PETER the sole sovereign of an empire but little above the range of barbarism. This Peter, who became PETER THE GREAT, was then but seventeen years old. He was far in advance of every one, and his reign marks the era of Russia’s rise to greatness among the nations. Yet this man never rose to the conception of what must be a nation’s true glory. His ideas all ran in the line of material grandeur, and not in the direction of moral and mental progress. He was a born mechanic, and he built a nation. He thought to build a people just as he built the city that bears his name. His superstitious nobles considered it wicked for him to go abroad, but he had heard of the arts of civilization, that made France and Holland and England glorious in the world, and he determined to see for himself what it was that made them so. He laid aside his imperial purple (if he ever had any), and travelled into distant lands. Sometimes he concealed his royal person in the garb of a common workman, and wrought in the shops with his own hands. I have seen many specimens of his handicraft that would do credit to any artisan who earned his bread by his industry and skill. He was a capital ship carpenter. Russia was in want of a navy. Peter learned how to build ships, and made a navy for Russia. In foreign countries he studied every thing, but learned nothing truly great in the art of government. Going into the courts of Westminster with a friend one day, in London, and seeing many men with wigs, he asked who they were. “They are lawyers,” said his friend. “Lawyers!” he exclaimed; “why, I have only two lawyers in my dominions, and I mean to hang one as soon as I return.”