Note 118 — CHAP. XXXVI.

Catherine paid the last duties to her husband's ashes, with a pomp becoming the greatest monarch that Russia, or perhaps any other country, had ever known; and though there is no court of Europe where splendour and magnificence is carried to a greater height on these occasions than in that of Russia, yet it may with great truth be said, that she even surpassed herself in the funeral honours paid to her great Peter. She purchased the most precious kinds of marble, and employed some of the ablest sculptors of Italy to erect a mausoleum to this hero, which might, if possible, transmit the remembrance of his great actions to the most distant ages. Not satisfied with this, she caused a medal to be struck, worthy of the ancients. On one side was represented the bust of the late emperor, with these words—'Peter the Great, Emperor and Sovereign of all Russia, born May 30, 1672. On the reverse was the empress sitting, with the crown on her head, the globe and sceptre by her side on a table, and before her were a sphere, sea charts, plans, mathematical instruments, arms, and a caduceus. At distances, in three different places, were represented an edifice on the sea coast, with a platform before it, a ship and galley at sea, and the late emperor in the clouds, supported by eternity, looking on the empress, and shewing her with his right hand all the treasures he had left her, with these words, 'Behold what I have left you.' In the exergue, 'Deceased 28 January, 1725.' Several of these medals she ordered to be struck in gold, to the weight of fifty ducats and distributed among the foreign ministers, and all the grandees of the empire, as a testimony of her respect and gratitude to the memory of her late husband, to whose generosity she took a pleasure in owning herself indebted for her present elevated station.

Mottley gives us the following, as the czar's epitaph:

Here lieth, All that could die of a man immortal, PETER ALEXIOWITZ: It is almost superfluous to add, Great Emperor of Russia! A title, Which, instead of adding to his glory, Became glorious by his wearing it. Let antiquity be dumb, Nor boast her Alexander, or her Cæsar. How easy was victory To leaders who were followed by heroes! And whose soldiers felt a noble disdain At being thought less vigilant than their generals! But he, Who in this place first knew rest, Found subjects base and inactive, Unwarlike, unlearned, untractable; Neither covetous of fame, nor fearless of danger; Creatures with the names of men, But with qualities rather brutal than rational! Yet, even these He polished from their native ruggedness; And, breaking out like a new sun, To illuminate the minds of a people, Dispelled their night of hereditary darkness; And, by force of his invincible influence, Taught them to conquer Even the conquerors of Germany. Other princes have commanded victorious armies; This commander created them. Blush, O Art! at a hero who owed thee nothing Exult, O Nature! for thine was this prodigy.