in a little wooden house by the water's edge, and wrote home, "Oh, oh I am so happy; I am in paradise."

A few years later Peter visited it again, and this time it was flooded, so that all the houses were many feet deep in water. Peter was very much amused, and said, "It is quite funny to see how people sit on the roofs and trees, as they did in the time of the deluge."

To get the streets paved he obliged every boat that came to bring some stones; and to get houses built he obliged each of the great nobles to build a stone house there.

The streets were not lighted for many years, and wolves wandered in them at night. There were a great many fires, and many robberies and murders.

Peter used to spend busy days there, getting up to settle his affairs with the ministers at three o'clock in the morning, and then seeing how the shipbuilding was getting on, and often working at his lathe till eleven o'clock, when he had dinner. After dinner he went to sleep for an hour, as most people do in Russia, and in the afternoon he walked about to look at the work. In the evening he went to some of his assemblies, or stayed at home with his family, and went to bed about ten. The palaces he had built were rather mean little places, for he liked low rooms and disliked smart furniture.

Peter had a good deal of trouble in making St.

Petersburg the capital. The people had got so used to trading with European merchants at Archangel that they did not like to change, particularly as the roads to St. Petersburg were very bad. Besides that, they were afraid of the Swedes taking their ships if they sailed down the Baltic. Peter, to alter this, had a canal cut to join the Neva to the Volga, and he put a tax on everything sold in Archangel, to persuade the people to come to St. Petersburg instead.

Another difficulty was that the nobles all hated St. Petersburg. It was cold and ugly and uncomfortable, and a long way from Moscow. They all hated going in boats, and there was nothing to amuse them-no old churches and relics and historical monuments- -as at Moscow. Besides which, in order to save wood, they were not allowed to heat their bath-houses more than once a week, and as Russians love nothing more than baths, this made them very cross. They all hoped that St. Petersburg would be deserted. But Peter took pains that it should not. He had gardens laid out, and forced people to come and live there till there were about a hundred thousand there. He knew that it was of great use to Russia to have a window to look at Europe.

You must remember that all these changes were made gradually, while the war was going on with Sweden. They are only put together to help you to remember them.

Now we come to the second part of Peter's reign, from 1709 till 1725.

They were not very happy years. There was a war with Turkey which ended sadly, though it began very happily. The Russians were always eager to fight the Turks, and so the great army marched against the mighty Constantinople full of hope.

But the Turks fell on them fiercely, and the army was almost destroyed. And the proud Czar Peter had to ask for peace, and to give up Azof, his first great conquest. Also he was obliged to destroy his fleet on the Black Sea-that first little fleet which he had built with such hope and such pains so many years ago. That went to Peter's heart most of all.

In 1717 Peter took another journey into Europe, and a very different one.

In his first journey he had been almost a boy, and a boy who did not know European customs. People had looked at him rather as a curiosity which ought to be put under a glass case, or as a strange beast which might bite. Now he was the great conqueror of the Swedes, and had the largest army in Europe. Yet in one way he was the same old Peter still. For instead of calling on the French princes he went and enjoyed himself at a coachbuilder's.

While he was away he made peace with Sweden.