WITH ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year
one thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's office of the District Court
of the Southern District of New York.

Copyright, 1887, by BENJAMIN VAUGHAN ABBOTT, AUSTIN ABBOTT,
LYMAN ABBOTT, and EDWARD ABBOTT.

PREFACE.

There are very few persons who have not heard of the fame of Peter the Great, the founder, as he is generally regarded by mankind, of Russian civilization. The celebrity, however, of the great Muscovite sovereign among young persons is due in a great measure to the circumstance of his having repaired personally to Holland, in the course of his efforts to introduce the industrial arts among his people, in order to study himself the art and mystery of shipbuilding, and of his having worked with his own hands in a ship-yard there. The little shop where Peter pursued these practical studies still stands in Saardam, a ship-building town not far from Amsterdam. The building is of wood, and is now much decayed; but, to preserve it from farther injury, it has been incased in a somewhat larger building of brick, and it is visited annually by great numbers of curious travelers.

The whole history of Peter, as might be expected from the indications of character developed by this incident, forms a narrative that is full of interest and instruction for all.

[Transcriber's note: In the original book, each page had a header summarizing the contents of that page. These headers have been collected into introductory paragraphs at the start of each chapter. The headers also contain the year in which the events on the page took place. These dates have been placed between the chapter title and the introductory paragraph, in the form of a date range, e.g., for Chapter I, "1676-1684."]