E-text prepared by Curtis Weyant, Ronald Holder, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net) The world is now too busy to read voluminous history. The interminable details of battles, and the petty intrigues of courtiers and mistresses, have lost their interest. In this volume it has been our object to trace perspicuously the path which Russia has trod from earliest infancy to the present hour. The career of this empire has been so wild and wonderful that the historian can have no occasion to call in the aid of fancy for the embellishment of his narrative.…
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