In all that he saw in England and Holland, where he spent most of his time abroad, he never learned that _mind_ makes nations great; that intelligence is the security of national progress and prosperity, and that the people, even under despotic governments, have the power to help themselves if their rulers will give them a chance. But he came back with the idea of making his empire greater by making it broader, and he took the sword as the instrument of success. He was partially successful. After a reign of half a century, he died and left his empire on the highway to civilization and glory. It is wonderful that Russia has made so little progress since his death in 1725. Yet no monarch ever reigned who descended to such minute details in legislating for his people. Inured to hardships himself, and possessed with the idea that nothing was invincible which his will was set to overcome, he undertook to force his subjects into sudden and astounding reforms, from which they revolted. He could not make them see with his eyes, nor work with his hands. He made his clergy shave their faces, and the enemies of his innovations called him the antichrist. No man ever lived who impressed himself more indelibly upon a people than Peter the Great. His name is held in honor second only to the Divine. The relics of his handiwork are preserved with religious care. Every museum has some specimen of his genius and industry, and the lapse of a hundred and fifty years since these things were made by imperial fingers invests them with interest approaching reverential awe. But the greatest of all his works, and one that is the most characteristic of the man, is the city of St. Petersburg itself. Why he selected such a site for it, it is impossible to say, unless its very unfitness and apparent impracticability developed that faculty for which he was so remarkable, and impelled him to undertake what to others was an impossibility. From the summit of a monument, or the dome of St. Isaac’s Cathedral, the city seems to float in the waters. And this would not be a fatal objection to the site if it stood in such relations to the rest of the empire or the world as to make it important to fix it here. But it does not. Winter shuts it out from communication with the sea about half the time.