He navigated a yacht every day up and down the river.

His apartment was crowded with models of three deckers and two deckers, frigates, sloops and fireships.

The only Englishman of rank in whose society he seemed to take much pleasure was the eccentric Caermarthen, whose passion for the sea bore some resemblance to his own, and who was very competent to give an opinion about every part of a ship from the stem to the stern.
Caermarthen, indeed, became so great a favourite that he prevailed on the Czar to consent to the admission of a limited quantity of tobacco into Russia.

There was reason to apprehend that the Russian clergy would cry out against any relaxation of the ancient rule, and would strenuously maintain that the practice of smoking was condemned by that text which declares that man is defiled, not by those things which enter in at the mouth, but by those which proceed out of it.

This apprehension was expressed by a deputation of merchants who were admitted to an audience of the Czar; but they were reassured by the air with which he told them that he knew how to keep priests in order.
He was indeed so free from any bigoted attachment to the religion in which he had been brought up that both Papists and Protestants hoped at different times to make him a proselyte.