While incessantly engaged in these arduous operations, the emperor was seized with a painful and dangerous sickness--a strangury--which confined him to his room for four months. Feeling a little better one day, he ordered his yacht to be brought up to the Neva, opposite his palace, and embarked to visit some of his works on Lake Ladoga. His physicians, vainly remonstrating against it, accompanied him. It was the middle of October. The weather continuing fine, the emperor remained upon the water, visiting his works upon the shore of the lake and of the Gulf of Finland, until the 5th of November. The exposures of the voyage proved too much for him, and he returned to Petersburg in a state of debility and pain which excited the greatest apprehensions. The disease made rapid progress. The mind of the emperor, as he approached the dying hour, was clouded, and, with the inarticulate mutterings of delirium, he turned to and fro, restless, upon his bed. His devoted wife, for three days and three nights, did not leave his side, and, on the 28th of January, 1725, at four o'clock in the afternoon, he breathed his last, in her arms. Before the dethronement of his reason, the tzar had assembled around his bed the chief dignitaries of the empire, and had requested them, as soon as he should be dead, to acknowledge the Empress Catharine as their sovereign. He even took the precaution to exact from them an oath that they would do this. Peter died in the fifty-third year of his age. None of the children whom he had by his first wife survived him. Both of the sons whom he had by the Empress Catharine were also dead. Two daughters still lived. After the Empress Catharine, the next heir to the throne was his grandson, Peter, the orphan child of the guilty Alexis. Immediately upon the death of the emperor, the senate assembled and unanimously declared Catharine Empress of Russia. In a body, they waited upon Catharine with this announcement, and were presented to her by Prince Menzikoff. The mourning for the tzar was universal and heartfelt. The remains were conveyed to the tomb with all the solemnities becoming the burial of one of the greatest monarchs earth has ever known. Over his remains the empress erected a monument sculptured by the most accomplished artists of Italy, containing the following inscription: HERE LIETH ALL THAT COULD DIE OF A MAN IMMORTAL, PETER ALEXOUITZ;