arcades of
Gresham's Bourse, and taken in exchange that ugly old labyrinth of dingy
brick and plastered timber. It might now be hoped that we should have
a Louvre. Before the ashes of the old palace were cold, plans for a new
palace were circulated and discussed. But William, who could not draw
his breath in the air of Westminster, was little disposed to expend
a million on a house which it would have been impossible for him
to inhabit. Many blamed him for not restoring the dwelling of his
predecessors; and a few Jacobites, whom evil temper and repeated
disappointments had driven almost mad, accused him of having burned it
down. It was not till long after his death that Tory writers ceased to
call for the rebuilding of Whitehall, and to complain that the King of
England had no better town house than St. James's, while the delightful
spot where the Tudors and the Stuarts had held their councils and their
revels was covered with the mansions of his jobbing courtiers. [9]

In the same week in which Whitehall perished, the Londoners were
supplied with a new topic of conversation by a royal visit, which, of
all royal visits, was the least pompous and ceremonious and yet the most
interesting and important. On the 10th of January a vessel from Holland
anchored off Greenwich and was welcomed with great respect. Peter the
First, Czar of Muscovy, was on board. He took boat with a few attendants
and was rowed up the Thames to Norfolk Street, where a house overlooking
the river had been prepared for his reception.

His journey is an epoch in the history, not only of his own country, but
of our's, and of the world. To the polished nations of Western Europe,
the empire which he governed had till then been what Bokhara or Siam is
to us. That empire indeed, though less extensive than at present, was
the most extensive that had ever obeyed a single chief. The dominions of
Alexander and of Trajan were small when compared with the immense
area of the Scythian desert. But in the estimation of statesmen that
boundless expanse of larch forest and morass, where the snow lay deep
during eight months of every year, and where a wretched peasantry could
with difficulty defend their hovels against troops of famished wolves,
was of less account than the two or three square miles into which were
crowded the counting houses, the warehouses, and the innumerable masts
of Amsterdam. On the Baltic Russia had not then a single port. Her
maritime trade wi