In the spring of the ensuing year, the empire being tranquil, and the young Czar’s authority apparently established on a safe footing, he determined to travel into foreign countries, to view with his own eyes, and become personally and practically familiar with the arts and institutions of refined nations. There was a grotesqueness in his manner of executing this design, which has tended, more probably than even its real merit, to make it one of the common places of history. Every child knows how the Czar of Muscovy worked in the dock-yard of Saardam in Holland, as a common carpenter. In most men this would have been affectation; and perhaps there was some tinge of that weakness in the earnestness with which Peter handled the axe, obeyed the officers of the dock-yard, and, in all points of outward manners and appearance, put himself on a level with the shipwrights who were earning their daily bread. Most men too would have thought it unnecessary, that a prince, intent upon creating a navy, should learn the mere mechanical art of putting a ship together; and that his time would have been better employed in studying the sciences connected with navigation, and the discipline and details of the naval service as established in the best schools. It seems, however, to have been the turn of Peter’s mind always to begin at the beginning; a sound maxim, though here perhaps pushed beyond reasonable bounds. We have said, that he scrupulously went through the lowest services in the army and navy: probably he thought it as necessary that one who aimed at creating and directing a navy should not be ignorant of the practical art of ship-building, as that a general should be capable of performing himself the movements which he directs the private to execute. And his abode and occupations in Holland formed only part of an extensive plan. On quitting Russia he sent sixty young Russians to Venice and Leghorn to learn ship-building and navigation, and especially the construction and management of the large galleys moved by oars, which were so much used by the Venetian republic. Others he sent into Holland, with similar instructions; others into Germany, to study the art of war, and make themselves well acquainted with the discipline and tactics of the German troops. So that while his personal labour at Saardam may have been stimulated in part by affectation of singularity, in part perhaps by a love of bodily exertion common in men of his busy and ardent temper, it would be unjust not to give him credit for higher motives; such as the desire to become thoroughly acquainted with the art of ship-building, which he thought so important, and to set a good example of diligence to those whom he had sent out on a similar voyage of education.