But in spite of all these considerations, the importance of which I am far from denying, I am inclined to think Peter's choice a wise one. Nobody can wonder that the idea of retaining Moscow as his capital was most repugnant to him. The existence of his work in those hostile surroundings--in a place which to this day has remained obstinately reactionary--could never have been anything but precarious and uncertain. It must, after his death at least, if not during his life, have been at the mercy of those popular insurrections before which the sovereign power, as established in the Kremlin, had already so frequently bowed. When Peter carried Muscovy out of her former existence, and beyond her ancient frontiers, he was logically forced to treat the seat of his government in the same manner. His new undertaking resembled, both in aspect and character, a marching and fighting formation, directed toward the west. The leader's place, and that of his chief residence, was naturally indicated at the head of his column. This once granted, and the principle of the translation of the capital to the western extremity of the Czar's newly acquired possessions admitted, the advantages offered by Ingria would appear to me to outweigh all the drawbacks previously referred to. The province was, at that period, virgin soil sparsely inhabited by a Finnish population possessing neither cohesion nor historical consistency, and, consequently, docile and easily assimilated. Everywhere else--all along the Baltic coast, in Esthonia, in Carelia, and in Courland--though the Swedes might be driven out, the Germans still remained firmly settled; the neighborhood of their native country and of the springs of Teutonic culture enduing them with an invincible power of resistance. Riga in the present day, after nearly two centuries of Russian government, is a thoroughly German town. In St. Petersburg, Russia, as a country, became European and cosmopolitan, but the city itself is essentially Russian, and the Finnish element in its neighborhood counts for nothing. In this matter, though Peter may not have clearly felt and thought it out, he was actuated by the mighty and unerring instinct of his genius. I am willing to admit that here, as in everything else, there was a certain amount of whim, and perhaps some childish desire to ape Amsterdam. I will even go further, and acknowledge that the manner in which he carried out his plan was anything but reasonable. Two hundred thousand laborers, we are told, died during the construction of the new city, and the Russian nobles ruined themselves to build palaces which soon fell out of occupation. But an abyss was opened between the past the reformer had doomed and the future on which he had set his heart, and the national life, thus violently forced into a new channel, was stamped, superficially at first, but more and more deeply by degrees, with the Western and European character he desired to impart.