Excerpt from Peter the Great Measure thy powers on thine undertaking and not the undertaking by thy powers.' this bold advice, the dictum of a poet and fellow-country man of my own, has been the almost indispensable inspira tion of this historical work of mine. The figure which forms its subject - towering above the history, bound up, to this very hour, with the existence, of the Russian nation - is not one to be lightly approached. Therefore it is that I have come to him so late, that I have worked backwards, up the course of the years, from the great Inheritress to the creator of her inheritance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.