Chapter Seven.

Chapter Seven.Journey to Moscow—Russian Railway—Passengers—Mr Evergreen and his Hat-box—Refreshment Rooms—Scenes on the Road—Polite Spy—First View of Moscow—Unromantic Mode of Entering it—Hotel Chollet—The Chinese City—The Kremlin—The Great Bazaar—Cathedral of Saint Basil—The Holy Gate—Great Bell of Moscow—Tower of Ivan Veleki—Wonderful View from the Summit—The Tulip City.“And now, my boys, we may pack up and be off for Moscow,” exclaimed Cousin Giles as they reached the Gostiniza Benson, after settling all the preliminary passport business, without which no one, either of high or low degree, subject or foreigner, can move from one city to another in the empire of the Czar. There is no great difficulty in this passport business, and no great annoyance; but still it is apt to ruffle the temper of the most mild and patient men, to have to spend the whole of one day, during their stay in each place, in performing a task which might well be dispensed with, not to speak of having to disburse several roubles on each occasion; it is not, therefore, surprising that everybody who writes about Russia should grumble at the system, and occupy many pages in abusing it.The Moscow railroad station is at the end of the Nevsky Prospect. The travellers reached it soon after ten o’clock. Only one train started in the day, so that to miss it was to lose a day. The building is a fine one. It is entirely under Government superintendence, and the stationmaster, and ticket-clerks, and porters, and policemen, and guards are all in military uniform; it makes a person very much inclined to behave himself. A passenger must get to the station in good time, for there are all sorts of preliminaries to be gone through. One cannot jump out of a cab, rush to the ticket-office, sing out, “Porter, bring along my luggage!” jump into a carriage, and away to Edinburgh or Holyhead without a question being asked;—oh no! People do not go ahead quite so fast in the kingdom of the Czar. Before a ticket can be got, the passport must be shown at one office, where it is stamped; then one goes over to another office, where it is examined and the ticket granted,—all in the most deliberate way, rather trying to a person who fancies that he is late. Then the luggage must be taken to another place, and a ticket bought for it, and paid for according to the number of articles; then it must be delivered over the counter at another place; and lastly, the perplexed traveller is allowed to go on the platform and select his seat. The carriages are very long, the entrance, after the American model, being at each end, where there is a platform, a passage running down the whole length of the carriage, so that people can pass from one end of the train to the other. The second-class have seats arranged in rows like those in a church, and are not very comfortable for a long journey; but the first-class are more luxurious: at each end there is a small ante-room, then a saloon with ottomans round it, and the centre compartment is full of large, luxurious arm-chairs, far enough apart to allow long-legged men to stretch their legs to the full. The windows are large, and of plate glass, which, as Harry observed, would be very convenient if there was anything to look at out of them. Our friends had arranged themselves in one of the centre compartments, and the lime of departure was at hand, when Mr Evergreen made his appearance on the platform in a state of great agitation, first turning to one moustached fierce-looking official, then to another, appealing in vain to know, as it appeared, what had become of parts of his luggage.“Does any one know the Russian for hat-box?” he exclaimed. “Hatboxichoff! Hatboxichoff!” he cried in piteous accents. “Dear me, dear me—there are all my writing things in it, and my letters, and my money, and my best hat, and my gloves; and I shall be sent to prison as an impostor, and not be able to appear decent at the coronation, and have no means of paying my bills, and be starved, and—”At that moment he caught sight of Cousin Giles’ face. His countenance brightened up. “Oh, Mr Fairman, I am so glad to see you!—can you help me?” he cried.Cousin Giles asked to see his luggage ticket, and, finding that the same number of packages which he possessed in all were marked on it, assured him that there could be no doubt his hat-box was safe.Thus assured in his mind, Mr Evergreen took his seat. The ticket is a long strip of paper, with the names of the chief places on the road marked on it, and the fares to each of them. The passengers having taken their places, the military officials waved their hands, and the long train began to move.The view as they left the city was not interesting. Some large red-brick houses appeared above the low huts in the outskirts, with a large reed-bordered lagoon, and a wide extent of dead level covered with low shrubs or rank dry grass. The distance to Moscow is about five hundred versts, nearly four hundred miles, and for the whole of that distance there is very little improvement towards picturesque beauty. Now and then, to be sure, they came to woods of birch or fir, but the trees were small and widely scattered; still the chief feature was a dead flat covered with scrub.Russia, however, is very far from being a barren and unfruitful country. There are large tracts near its numerous rivers which yield an abundant harvest of all descriptions of corn, and there are forests full of the finest trees, whilst fruits of many descriptions also are produced. This particular road, however, gives a stranger a very unfavourable impression of the country; still there were many things to interest our friends. About a mile, it seemed, from each other were little oblong wooden cottages, with a square enclosure in the rear and a platform in front, all so exactly alike that Harry said they looked as if they had been taken out of some Dutch brobdignag toy-box and placed along the road. In front of each hut, as the train passed along, appeared a guard, presenting arms with an iron-headed pike; and so exactly did one look like the other that Harry said he was certain there must be some spring underground which made them all pop up as the train passed along. There must be at least five hundred along the line—every hut, man, cap, pike, and greatcoat formed after the same model; there were guards, also, at all the signal stations. Whenever, also, the train stopped, a fierce-looking guard, in the uniform of the French gendarmes,—bright-blue coats, helmets, and silver ornaments,—stood immoveable as sentries before each of the carriages, to prevent people from doing anything they ought not to do: altogether there seemed to be a very wholesome discipline established along the line. At all the stopping-places there were a number of Swiss-looking cottages, apparently newly erected; while the bridges and palings, and flights of steps and banisters, and refreshment booths, and vast long sheds in which heaps of logs were piled up, all looked as if they had been made in Switzerland, and were exactly like the models which come in neat white wooden boxes to England from that country of mountains and snow. They were very neat, and pretty, and picturesque, but certainly did not look as if they belonged to the place.At every station there are refreshments of some sort. Our friends observed fruits, raspberries, strawberries, and peaches, though of an untempting appearance and very dear; and also cakes of various forms, bread, beer, and of course quass.At all the larger stations there are large, long, handsome refreshment rooms, equal in appearance to those at the large stations in England,—there is one for each class. At one of these they stopped for three-quarters of an hour, when a good dinner was served at about half-past four. They did not note the name of the place, but Harry suggested that it must have beenChudova, which was one of the principal places on the road.Chew!“Oh, oh, Harry!” exclaimed Fred as he heard his brother’s atrocious pun.The tea is excellent at these places; a tumblerful costs ten kopecks, but a regular tea costs thirty, about fifteen-pence; indeed, the charges are much the same as in England. Probably at home, more substantial and better fare is to be got at the same price.As soon as the train stops, out get all the passengers, and a very motley assemblage they form as they pace up and down on the platform. Uniforms of all sorts predominate, from the modern-coated, richly-laced officer of the Emperor’s guard, to the sombre-dressed rank and file of the line. There were Circassians and Georgians, and Cossacks of the Don and Volga, and other remote districts, in blue and silver coats, fur caps with red tops, and wide trousers, and yellow boots, and gauntlets on their hands, and jewelled daggers, and chain armour, and carved scimitars, with black, flashing eyes, and thickly curling glossy beards and moustaches, their language as well as their appearance telling of far-off southern regions, which have succumbed before the arms or the diplomacy of Russia. Then there were Armenians and Persians, men of peace, intent only on making money, with high-pointed fur caps, long gowns, full, dark trousers, and waists belted not to carry swords, but inkhorns; and Tartars with turbans, and rich shawls, and gold-embroidered slippers; and priests with low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, beneath which straggled huge quantities of long light hair, and long green coats, and crosses rather ostentatiously shown at their breasts. There were traders, too, from the northern cities of the Empire, dressed in long dressing-gown-looking coats, more properly described as dirty than clean, and high boots, and low-crowned hats, and beards of considerable length and thickness; while the humbler classes, the mujicks, evidently delighted in pink shirts with their tails worn outside their trousers, and fastened round their waist with a sash or belt. These wore caps, and high boots, and long coats, like the rest; indeed, the inhabitants of Russia may be said to be a long-coated, boot-wearing population. There were women passengers, but there was nothing very peculiar in their appearance. The upper classes wore bonnets, and the lower had handkerchiefs tied over their heads, or caps, with thick-padded cloaks. They all had brought huge leather pillows, and cloaks, and shawls, to make themselves comfortable in the carriages.No sooner did the train stop than all the men lighted their cigars and pipes, and began to puff away most assiduously. Our friends were much amused at seeing a servant bring his master, an old gentleman, his pipe at every station. It was the servant’s business not only to light it but to draw it up, and the cunning rogue took good care to get as many whiffs out of it as possible before he removed it from his own mouth.“That’s what I call smoking made easy,” said Harry. “I’ve heard of a man being another’s mouthpiece, and this old gentleman seems to make use of his serf for the same purpose.”Some of the priests wore fur caps and dark gowns, and others had on broad-brimmed hats and green gowns, with dark overcoats; some had several crosses on their breasts, frizzy or straggling hair being common to all. One of them, who was in a first-class carriage, pulled out a comb and began combing his beard and hair with great assiduity—an operation more pleasant, doubtless, to himself than to his neighbours. There was a fine Abasian officer—Abasia is a province bordering on the Caucasus, conquered by the Russians. He wore a black fur cap with a red-and-white top to it,—night-cap fashion,—a white coat with cartridge cases in the breast and trimmed and lined with fur, a silver-lace belt round his waist, white gloves with fur backs, and green trousers with a silver stripe down the legs; yellow boots, a curved scimitar behind, and a richly-jewelled dagger in his belt in front completed his costume. He was a very fine-looking fellow, and was most evidently aware of the fact. He was on good terms with every one, and laughed and chatted with all the officers of rank. Such were some of the companions our friends had on their journey.Mr Evergreen said that he considered it his duty to taste the tea at each stopping-place, to ascertain whether it was really superior to any to be found out of China. At some places he took only a tumblerful, but at others the samovar, with the little teapot on the top of it, and a small china cup were placed before him, with a tumbler also. Those who have not drunk tea out of a tumbler may be assured that it is by far the best way of taking it to quench thirst. The Americans put a lump of ice into it, which keeps bobbing up against the nose while the hot tea is being quaffed—also a very agreeable fashion. The result of all this tea-drinking was, that poor Evergreen could not manage to close his eyes when night came on, and the rest of his party went to sleep. After some hours had passed, he was accosted by an officer in uniform.“Ah, sir, I see that sleep has fled your eyelids,” said the officer in very good English.“Oh, yes; but I can do very well without it,” replied Evergreen, delighted to have some one to talk to; “there is always so much to think about and interest one in a strange country.”“Your first visit here, I presume?” said the stranger.“Never out of England before,” replied Evergreen.“What do you think of affairs in general in this country?” asked the stranger.“Very large country—very fine country—inhabitants very polite. Big city Saint Petersburg. People may not say exactly what they think, I hear; but that’s nothing to me, you know,” observed our friend.“Oh, that’s quite a mistake, my dear sir,” replied the stranger; “people may say exactly what they think, I assure you: no one interferes with them. Now, for instance, in the friendly way in which we are talking, one man might unbosom himself to another of his most secret thoughts, and no harm could come to him.”“Very pleasant state of society; exactly what I like,” said Evergreen, who thereupon, taking the hint, launched forth on several little bits of his own family history, with which he was fond of entertaining any casual acquaintance.The strange officer appeared to be listening attentively, and finally offered to call upon Evergreen and to show him the lions of Moscow.Cousin Giles awoke while the conversation was going on, and was exceedingly amused at what he overheard, especially with the warm way in which Evergreen accepted the stranger’s offer. After the latter had made numerous inquiries about Cousin Giles, and Fred, and Harry, he got up and went into another carriage.“Wonderfully polite man that was who came and talked to me last night,” observed Evergreen in the morning, after the passengers had rubbed their eyes and stretched themselves. “I wonder who he can be. A man of some consequence, I should think.”Among the passengers were some merchants from the north, who had never before been at Moscow. They had for some time been putting their heads out of the windows, and as they caught sight of a few gilt domes and gaily-coloured roofs, and some convents scattered about, which was all that was visible of the holy city, they began crossing themselves and bowing most vigorously. This ceremony lasted till the train rushed into the station. The luggage was handed out as each person presented his ticket, and Mr Evergreen found, to his delight, that his hat-box was safe. A vast number of ishvoshtsticks presented their tickets, and offered their droskies for hire, and, two being selected, away the whole party rattled through broadish streets, paved with pebbles, up and down hill, among gardens, and green-roofed houses, and pink, and yellow, and grey, and blue walls, till they reached their hotel.They had been recommended to go to that of Monsieur Chollet, in the Grand Lubianka, and they had no reason to regret their choice. Nowhere could a more civil, active, attentive landlord be found. Every language seemed to flow with the greatest ease from his tongue. He would be talking to three or four customers in German, and English, and Italian, addressing his wife in French, and scolding his servants in their native Russian, answering fifty questions, giving advice, and receiving accounts, all in one breath. He did all sorts of things better than any one else. He went to market, came back and cooked the dinner, mixed the salad, and in another instant appeared dressed as if for a ball, and took his place at the head of the table. His dinners were very good, somewhat in the German fashion; and his rooms were very comfortable, and excessively clean for Russia.As soon as our friends had dressed and breakfasted, they sallied forth to gain a general view of the city. Evergreen said he thought he ought to wait for his new acquaintance, who had promised to call; but an English merchant, who happened to overhear him, assured him that he must not be delicate on the subject, as the person in question was simply one of the guards of the train, and that he was employed by the police to pick up any information he could about passengers.“Had he thought you a suspicious character, you would certainly have been honoured by a visit from him,” he added.“Dear me, if I had said anything treasonable, I should have been whirled off to a dungeon to a certainty,” exclaimed poor Evergreen, shuddering at the thought of the danger he had escaped.Moscow is one of the most romantic cities in Europe—indeed, there is no other to be compared with it; but our friends had entered it in so ordinary, every-day a manner that at first they could hardly persuade themselves that they had reached a considerable way towards the centre of Russia, and were really and truly in that far-famed city.“Now, my boys, we will steer a course for the Kremlin,” cried Cousin Giles, having taken the bearings of their hotel as they walked along the street called the Grand Lubianka.Their course was nearly a straight one. In a little time, crossing an open space, they found themselves before a line of fortified walls, and a gateway, such as they might have expected to see in a picture of China or Tartary, with strange-looking eastern turrets, and domes, and roofs rising within them.“This must be the Chinese city we have heard of,” said Cousin Giles.So it was. It is a city within a city. It has three sides, the walls of the Kremlin making the fourth. They passed through the gateway and found themselves in a narrow street, the buildings on either side of them having a still more Chinese appearance. On the left was a little church, with numerous parti-coloured domes, and minarets, and towers, and outside staircases leading nowhere, and railings, and balconies, and little excrescences of roofs, altogether forming an edifice much more like a Chinese than a Christian temple. Close to it, on the left, they saw a long open space, just inside the walls, crowded with people of the lowest order, with booths on either side. This was what may be called the rag fair of Moscow. The booths or shops contain all the articles either for dress or household purposes used by the mujicks. The sellers and purchasers were all talking and laughing, and haggling and chattering away as if the affairs of the nation depended on what they were about, and yet probably a few kopecks would have paid for any one of the articles bought or sold. At the end of the street the travellers came to the entrance of the great bazaar of Moscow, and as they looked down its numerous long alleys, glazed over at the top, they saw lines of little shops,—jewellers, and silversmiths, and makers of images, and hatters, and shoemakers, and tinmen, and trunk-makers, and other workers in leather, and head-dress makers, and blacksmiths, and toy sellers,—indeed, it would be difficult to enumerate all the various trades and handicrafts there represented, each trade being in a row by itself. Each shop was little more than a recess, with a counter in front of it, before which the shopmen stood, praising in loud voices their wares, and inviting passers-by to stop and inspect them. No time, however, was spent at the bazaar, for across a wide open space appeared a high pinnacled wall, with a line of curious green-pointed roofed towers, with golden crescents surmounted by crosses on their summits, and two gateways up a steep slope. Over the walls appeared a confused mass of golden and blue-and-silver domes, and spires, and towers, and green roofs, and crescents, and crosses, and gold and silver chains, glittering in the sun, altogether forming a scene such as is pictured in theArabian Nights Entertainmentsor other Oriental romances, but such as one scarcely expects to find within eight days’ easy journey of sober-minded, old, matter-of-fact England.“That must be the Kremlin,” exclaimed Fred. “Well, it is a curious place!”“There can be no doubt about it,” observed Cousin Giles. “And that gate to the left, under the high tower, with the lamp and the picture over it, must be the Holy Gate. Let us go through it. It leads us at once, I see by the map, to the terrace overlooking the river.” As they went down the place towards the river, they found themselves before a fine bronze group on a high pedestal.“Oh, those must be the statues of the two patriots, Posharskoi, the general who drove away the Tartars, and Minin, the merchant who devoted his fortune to the support of the army with which the victory was won. We will read about them by and by,” said Cousin Giles.As they stood there, on their right side were the walls of the Kremlin, on their left the front of the bazaar, while some way beyond appeared a most extraordinary-looking church, the Cathedral of Saint Basil. It has nine domes or cupolas,—one large one in the centre, and eight round it, each one painted of a different colour, with various ornaments; some are in stripes, some in checks, some red, some blue, some green, while the structure on which these domes stand consists of all sorts of ins and outs; windows, and stairs, and pillars, and arches—all, too, of different colours, green, and yellow, and red predominating. Harry looked at it for a minute, and then burst into a fit of laughter.“Well, that is the funniest building I ever saw,” he exclaimed. “It looks as if it was built up of sentry-boxes, and Hansom’s cabs, and dovecots, and windmills, and pig-sties, and all sorts of other things. It was built, I see, by Ivan the Cruel, and it is said that he was so pleased with its strangeness that he put out the eyes of the unfortunate architect, to prevent his ever building another like it.”“Pleasant gentleman he must have been,” observed Evergreen. “A new way he took to reward merit.”“Rather an old way,” said Cousin Giles. “I do not think that any sovereign would venture on such a proceeding now-a-days.”Putting off their visit to the bizarre little cathedral, they turned to the right through the Sacred Gate. Mr Evergreen did not observe that every one passing under it took off his hat, and very nearly got a prod from the sentry’s bayonet for his neglect of that ceremony. The story goes, that the picture over the gateway was unscorched by fire, and that the lamp continued burning all the time the French were in occupation of the city, untrimmed and unattended. A newly-recruited regiment of soldiers, without arms, were marching through, and it was curious to observe each man in succession doff his cap and cross himself as he passed the spot. High and low, rich and poor, all do the same. The only persons who neglected the duty were some wild-looking, dark-eyed lads, whose marked features and olive complexions at once proclaimed them to be Zingari or gipsies, of whom a great number are found in Russia. Moscow is said, like Rome, to stand on seven hills, of which that occupied by the Kremlin is the highest. It is not, however, as much as a hundred feet above the Moscowa, which flows in a horseshoe form directly to the south of it. It is enclosed by four walls of irregular length—that at the west end being so short that the space it occupies is almost triangular. Round the walls are about eighteen towers, which vary in shape and height, though they all have high-pointed roofs covered with green tiles. Outside the walls are gardens with grass, and trees, and gravel walks. In the interior, on the south side, is a magnificent esplanade and terrace overlooking the river, and the strange jumble of coloured buildings which compose the city. The rest of the ground is occupied with a collection of churches of all shapes and sizes and colours, and towers, and convents, and palaces. One palace, however, surpasses them all in beauty and size, though its shining white walls and richly-carved façade and general bran-new appearance look sadly out of place among all the venerable, grotesque, many-coloured, odd-shaped, Byzantine edifices which are dotted about in its neighbourhood. It looks like some huge intruder into the place, which all the old inhabitants are collecting to put forth again; or like an emu in a poultry-yard, at which all the parti-coloured cocks and hens and ducks are crowing, and cackling, and quacking, in a vain endeavour to frighten him out. It required more than one visit to the spot before our friends could learn the geography of the place, and distinguish the numerous churches of all sizes, and heights, and shapes, and varieties of outside and inside adornment. The chief, called the Cathedral, has its walls painted with subjects taken from Scripture, which to the purer taste of Protestants appear shocking and blasphemous. However, our travellers did not then attend to the details of the strange occupants of the Kremlin. Their object was to obtain a comprehensive view of the city from the summit of that gaunt old monster, the Tower of Ivan Veleki. They first, however, examined the huge bell which stands on a pedestal at its foot. This bell was once suspended on the top of a tower, which was burnt, and the bell in its fall had a little piece broken out of it. When they got up to it, they found that this little piece was far too heavy for any ten men to lift, and that the gap it left was big enough for a man to walk through.The door of the old tower was open, and they mounted a well-conditioned flight of circular steps towards the summit. Having climbed to the top of the first flight, they passed through a door into another tower, where there hung a peal of huge bells,—one more vast than the rest, which, on being struck, gave forth a wondrously musical sound.“I should not like to be near that fellow while he was ringing,” cried Harry; “he would make noise enough to deafen a rhinoceros.”They did not stop to hear those famous bells, but climbed on till they stood high above all the surrounding edifices. As they gazed forth from the narrow stone balcony which ran round the dome, they beheld rising on every side a sea of spires, domes, cupolas, minarets, towers, and roofs of every conceivable colour, shape, and size, not altogether unlike a vast garden filled with brobdignagian tulips, but with more hues than any tulip bed ever possessed; and, in addition to the many-coloured tints of the rainbow, there appeared numberless balls of burnished gold and silver, glittering brightly in the sun.Cousin Giles first ascertained their position by his compass. Turning to the north, they observed in that direction fewer churches, but numerous villas and lines of wood, with the arid steppe beyond them. To the south-west arose the Sparrow Hills, those celebrated heights whence Napoleon and his then victorious army first caught sight of that magic city which they deemed was soon to be the reward of all their toils, but yet which, ere many days had passed, was to prove the cause of their destruction. In the same direction the Moscowa was seen flowing down towards the city, to circle round a portion of it under the walls of the Kremlin, and then to run off again at an acute angle to the east. To the south, on a plain near the banks of the river, rose high above other buildings the red towers and walls of the Donskoy Convent, several other convents, carefully painted of different colours, being scattered about.“The birds which have their nests there can have no fear of mistaking their proper abodes on their return from their morning flight,” observed Harry, who generally formed quaint notions on what he saw.Directly below them were the numerous and strange gold, and black, and blue, and green domes of the churches of the Kremlin,—its dark-green pointed towers, its wide gravelled esplanade, the roofs of its vast palaces and public buildings, its belt of turreted walls and gardens with their green lawns and shade-giving trees; but stranger still was the city itself, with its thousands of coloured cupolas, turrets, domes, spires, roofs, and walls. To define this strangeness more clearly, there were domes of bright-blue, with golden stars and golden chains hanging from the golden crosses which surmounted them. There were some domes of size so vast that they looked like huge mountains of gold; some were of dark blue, and others of green and gold; some were black, and others shone like burnished steel; some were perfectly white, others grey, and others of the lightest blue, scarcely to be distinguished from the tint of the azure expanse amid which they reared their heads, except by the golden ball and cross and glittering chains above their summits.Again, some of the domes were of red and green stripes, and some of bright yellow, and pale yellow, and red; and some towers were surmounted by gigantic crowns, open and outspreading, as well as globe-like. The roofs and walls also exhibited a strange difference in their tints, though green, and red, and black, and grey, and brown predominated among the first; while the latter were white, and buff, and green, and blue, and deep red, and pink. Truly it was a strange scene, such as they had never before beheld, and could scarcely hope to behold elsewhere.They returned to the top of the tower again in the evening, just as the setting sun was throwing his glory giving rays across this richly-jewelled expanse, which shone forth in a perfect blaze of light, coloured by every hue of which the rainbow can boast.It is difficult to imagine the vast number of domes and cupolas which meet the eye in this strange city. There are said to be a thousand churches, though probably there are not so many. Few of these churches have less than five domes, and some have ten. Each tower also has a dome on its top, surmounted by a golden cross and chains. A large proportion of these domes are covered with gold, and some with sheets of silver; the others are either black and white, or of the various hues already described. Moscow may, indeed, most properly be called the Golden City. The only rule which the church architect here appears to observe is, to endeavour to make every new church as dissimilar as possible to every other existing in the city, in colour, shape, and size; yet they all evidently belong to the same style.Altogether the venerable Kremlin and the buildings it contains, with the mass of coloured edifices which surround it, form one of the strangest architectural jumbles in the universe.

Journey to Moscow—Russian Railway—Passengers—Mr Evergreen and his Hat-box—Refreshment Rooms—Scenes on the Road—Polite Spy—First View of Moscow—Unromantic Mode of Entering it—Hotel Chollet—The Chinese City—The Kremlin—The Great Bazaar—Cathedral of Saint Basil—The Holy Gate—Great Bell of Moscow—Tower of Ivan Veleki—Wonderful View from the Summit—The Tulip City.

Journey to Moscow—Russian Railway—Passengers—Mr Evergreen and his Hat-box—Refreshment Rooms—Scenes on the Road—Polite Spy—First View of Moscow—Unromantic Mode of Entering it—Hotel Chollet—The Chinese City—The Kremlin—The Great Bazaar—Cathedral of Saint Basil—The Holy Gate—Great Bell of Moscow—Tower of Ivan Veleki—Wonderful View from the Summit—The Tulip City.

“And now, my boys, we may pack up and be off for Moscow,” exclaimed Cousin Giles as they reached the Gostiniza Benson, after settling all the preliminary passport business, without which no one, either of high or low degree, subject or foreigner, can move from one city to another in the empire of the Czar. There is no great difficulty in this passport business, and no great annoyance; but still it is apt to ruffle the temper of the most mild and patient men, to have to spend the whole of one day, during their stay in each place, in performing a task which might well be dispensed with, not to speak of having to disburse several roubles on each occasion; it is not, therefore, surprising that everybody who writes about Russia should grumble at the system, and occupy many pages in abusing it.

The Moscow railroad station is at the end of the Nevsky Prospect. The travellers reached it soon after ten o’clock. Only one train started in the day, so that to miss it was to lose a day. The building is a fine one. It is entirely under Government superintendence, and the stationmaster, and ticket-clerks, and porters, and policemen, and guards are all in military uniform; it makes a person very much inclined to behave himself. A passenger must get to the station in good time, for there are all sorts of preliminaries to be gone through. One cannot jump out of a cab, rush to the ticket-office, sing out, “Porter, bring along my luggage!” jump into a carriage, and away to Edinburgh or Holyhead without a question being asked;—oh no! People do not go ahead quite so fast in the kingdom of the Czar. Before a ticket can be got, the passport must be shown at one office, where it is stamped; then one goes over to another office, where it is examined and the ticket granted,—all in the most deliberate way, rather trying to a person who fancies that he is late. Then the luggage must be taken to another place, and a ticket bought for it, and paid for according to the number of articles; then it must be delivered over the counter at another place; and lastly, the perplexed traveller is allowed to go on the platform and select his seat. The carriages are very long, the entrance, after the American model, being at each end, where there is a platform, a passage running down the whole length of the carriage, so that people can pass from one end of the train to the other. The second-class have seats arranged in rows like those in a church, and are not very comfortable for a long journey; but the first-class are more luxurious: at each end there is a small ante-room, then a saloon with ottomans round it, and the centre compartment is full of large, luxurious arm-chairs, far enough apart to allow long-legged men to stretch their legs to the full. The windows are large, and of plate glass, which, as Harry observed, would be very convenient if there was anything to look at out of them. Our friends had arranged themselves in one of the centre compartments, and the lime of departure was at hand, when Mr Evergreen made his appearance on the platform in a state of great agitation, first turning to one moustached fierce-looking official, then to another, appealing in vain to know, as it appeared, what had become of parts of his luggage.

“Does any one know the Russian for hat-box?” he exclaimed. “Hatboxichoff! Hatboxichoff!” he cried in piteous accents. “Dear me, dear me—there are all my writing things in it, and my letters, and my money, and my best hat, and my gloves; and I shall be sent to prison as an impostor, and not be able to appear decent at the coronation, and have no means of paying my bills, and be starved, and—”

At that moment he caught sight of Cousin Giles’ face. His countenance brightened up. “Oh, Mr Fairman, I am so glad to see you!—can you help me?” he cried.

Cousin Giles asked to see his luggage ticket, and, finding that the same number of packages which he possessed in all were marked on it, assured him that there could be no doubt his hat-box was safe.

Thus assured in his mind, Mr Evergreen took his seat. The ticket is a long strip of paper, with the names of the chief places on the road marked on it, and the fares to each of them. The passengers having taken their places, the military officials waved their hands, and the long train began to move.

The view as they left the city was not interesting. Some large red-brick houses appeared above the low huts in the outskirts, with a large reed-bordered lagoon, and a wide extent of dead level covered with low shrubs or rank dry grass. The distance to Moscow is about five hundred versts, nearly four hundred miles, and for the whole of that distance there is very little improvement towards picturesque beauty. Now and then, to be sure, they came to woods of birch or fir, but the trees were small and widely scattered; still the chief feature was a dead flat covered with scrub.

Russia, however, is very far from being a barren and unfruitful country. There are large tracts near its numerous rivers which yield an abundant harvest of all descriptions of corn, and there are forests full of the finest trees, whilst fruits of many descriptions also are produced. This particular road, however, gives a stranger a very unfavourable impression of the country; still there were many things to interest our friends. About a mile, it seemed, from each other were little oblong wooden cottages, with a square enclosure in the rear and a platform in front, all so exactly alike that Harry said they looked as if they had been taken out of some Dutch brobdignag toy-box and placed along the road. In front of each hut, as the train passed along, appeared a guard, presenting arms with an iron-headed pike; and so exactly did one look like the other that Harry said he was certain there must be some spring underground which made them all pop up as the train passed along. There must be at least five hundred along the line—every hut, man, cap, pike, and greatcoat formed after the same model; there were guards, also, at all the signal stations. Whenever, also, the train stopped, a fierce-looking guard, in the uniform of the French gendarmes,—bright-blue coats, helmets, and silver ornaments,—stood immoveable as sentries before each of the carriages, to prevent people from doing anything they ought not to do: altogether there seemed to be a very wholesome discipline established along the line. At all the stopping-places there were a number of Swiss-looking cottages, apparently newly erected; while the bridges and palings, and flights of steps and banisters, and refreshment booths, and vast long sheds in which heaps of logs were piled up, all looked as if they had been made in Switzerland, and were exactly like the models which come in neat white wooden boxes to England from that country of mountains and snow. They were very neat, and pretty, and picturesque, but certainly did not look as if they belonged to the place.

At every station there are refreshments of some sort. Our friends observed fruits, raspberries, strawberries, and peaches, though of an untempting appearance and very dear; and also cakes of various forms, bread, beer, and of course quass.

At all the larger stations there are large, long, handsome refreshment rooms, equal in appearance to those at the large stations in England,—there is one for each class. At one of these they stopped for three-quarters of an hour, when a good dinner was served at about half-past four. They did not note the name of the place, but Harry suggested that it must have beenChudova, which was one of the principal places on the road.

Chew!

“Oh, oh, Harry!” exclaimed Fred as he heard his brother’s atrocious pun.

The tea is excellent at these places; a tumblerful costs ten kopecks, but a regular tea costs thirty, about fifteen-pence; indeed, the charges are much the same as in England. Probably at home, more substantial and better fare is to be got at the same price.

As soon as the train stops, out get all the passengers, and a very motley assemblage they form as they pace up and down on the platform. Uniforms of all sorts predominate, from the modern-coated, richly-laced officer of the Emperor’s guard, to the sombre-dressed rank and file of the line. There were Circassians and Georgians, and Cossacks of the Don and Volga, and other remote districts, in blue and silver coats, fur caps with red tops, and wide trousers, and yellow boots, and gauntlets on their hands, and jewelled daggers, and chain armour, and carved scimitars, with black, flashing eyes, and thickly curling glossy beards and moustaches, their language as well as their appearance telling of far-off southern regions, which have succumbed before the arms or the diplomacy of Russia. Then there were Armenians and Persians, men of peace, intent only on making money, with high-pointed fur caps, long gowns, full, dark trousers, and waists belted not to carry swords, but inkhorns; and Tartars with turbans, and rich shawls, and gold-embroidered slippers; and priests with low-crowned, broad-brimmed hats, beneath which straggled huge quantities of long light hair, and long green coats, and crosses rather ostentatiously shown at their breasts. There were traders, too, from the northern cities of the Empire, dressed in long dressing-gown-looking coats, more properly described as dirty than clean, and high boots, and low-crowned hats, and beards of considerable length and thickness; while the humbler classes, the mujicks, evidently delighted in pink shirts with their tails worn outside their trousers, and fastened round their waist with a sash or belt. These wore caps, and high boots, and long coats, like the rest; indeed, the inhabitants of Russia may be said to be a long-coated, boot-wearing population. There were women passengers, but there was nothing very peculiar in their appearance. The upper classes wore bonnets, and the lower had handkerchiefs tied over their heads, or caps, with thick-padded cloaks. They all had brought huge leather pillows, and cloaks, and shawls, to make themselves comfortable in the carriages.

No sooner did the train stop than all the men lighted their cigars and pipes, and began to puff away most assiduously. Our friends were much amused at seeing a servant bring his master, an old gentleman, his pipe at every station. It was the servant’s business not only to light it but to draw it up, and the cunning rogue took good care to get as many whiffs out of it as possible before he removed it from his own mouth.

“That’s what I call smoking made easy,” said Harry. “I’ve heard of a man being another’s mouthpiece, and this old gentleman seems to make use of his serf for the same purpose.”

Some of the priests wore fur caps and dark gowns, and others had on broad-brimmed hats and green gowns, with dark overcoats; some had several crosses on their breasts, frizzy or straggling hair being common to all. One of them, who was in a first-class carriage, pulled out a comb and began combing his beard and hair with great assiduity—an operation more pleasant, doubtless, to himself than to his neighbours. There was a fine Abasian officer—Abasia is a province bordering on the Caucasus, conquered by the Russians. He wore a black fur cap with a red-and-white top to it,—night-cap fashion,—a white coat with cartridge cases in the breast and trimmed and lined with fur, a silver-lace belt round his waist, white gloves with fur backs, and green trousers with a silver stripe down the legs; yellow boots, a curved scimitar behind, and a richly-jewelled dagger in his belt in front completed his costume. He was a very fine-looking fellow, and was most evidently aware of the fact. He was on good terms with every one, and laughed and chatted with all the officers of rank. Such were some of the companions our friends had on their journey.

Mr Evergreen said that he considered it his duty to taste the tea at each stopping-place, to ascertain whether it was really superior to any to be found out of China. At some places he took only a tumblerful, but at others the samovar, with the little teapot on the top of it, and a small china cup were placed before him, with a tumbler also. Those who have not drunk tea out of a tumbler may be assured that it is by far the best way of taking it to quench thirst. The Americans put a lump of ice into it, which keeps bobbing up against the nose while the hot tea is being quaffed—also a very agreeable fashion. The result of all this tea-drinking was, that poor Evergreen could not manage to close his eyes when night came on, and the rest of his party went to sleep. After some hours had passed, he was accosted by an officer in uniform.

“Ah, sir, I see that sleep has fled your eyelids,” said the officer in very good English.

“Oh, yes; but I can do very well without it,” replied Evergreen, delighted to have some one to talk to; “there is always so much to think about and interest one in a strange country.”

“Your first visit here, I presume?” said the stranger.

“Never out of England before,” replied Evergreen.

“What do you think of affairs in general in this country?” asked the stranger.

“Very large country—very fine country—inhabitants very polite. Big city Saint Petersburg. People may not say exactly what they think, I hear; but that’s nothing to me, you know,” observed our friend.

“Oh, that’s quite a mistake, my dear sir,” replied the stranger; “people may say exactly what they think, I assure you: no one interferes with them. Now, for instance, in the friendly way in which we are talking, one man might unbosom himself to another of his most secret thoughts, and no harm could come to him.”

“Very pleasant state of society; exactly what I like,” said Evergreen, who thereupon, taking the hint, launched forth on several little bits of his own family history, with which he was fond of entertaining any casual acquaintance.

The strange officer appeared to be listening attentively, and finally offered to call upon Evergreen and to show him the lions of Moscow.

Cousin Giles awoke while the conversation was going on, and was exceedingly amused at what he overheard, especially with the warm way in which Evergreen accepted the stranger’s offer. After the latter had made numerous inquiries about Cousin Giles, and Fred, and Harry, he got up and went into another carriage.

“Wonderfully polite man that was who came and talked to me last night,” observed Evergreen in the morning, after the passengers had rubbed their eyes and stretched themselves. “I wonder who he can be. A man of some consequence, I should think.”

Among the passengers were some merchants from the north, who had never before been at Moscow. They had for some time been putting their heads out of the windows, and as they caught sight of a few gilt domes and gaily-coloured roofs, and some convents scattered about, which was all that was visible of the holy city, they began crossing themselves and bowing most vigorously. This ceremony lasted till the train rushed into the station. The luggage was handed out as each person presented his ticket, and Mr Evergreen found, to his delight, that his hat-box was safe. A vast number of ishvoshtsticks presented their tickets, and offered their droskies for hire, and, two being selected, away the whole party rattled through broadish streets, paved with pebbles, up and down hill, among gardens, and green-roofed houses, and pink, and yellow, and grey, and blue walls, till they reached their hotel.

They had been recommended to go to that of Monsieur Chollet, in the Grand Lubianka, and they had no reason to regret their choice. Nowhere could a more civil, active, attentive landlord be found. Every language seemed to flow with the greatest ease from his tongue. He would be talking to three or four customers in German, and English, and Italian, addressing his wife in French, and scolding his servants in their native Russian, answering fifty questions, giving advice, and receiving accounts, all in one breath. He did all sorts of things better than any one else. He went to market, came back and cooked the dinner, mixed the salad, and in another instant appeared dressed as if for a ball, and took his place at the head of the table. His dinners were very good, somewhat in the German fashion; and his rooms were very comfortable, and excessively clean for Russia.

As soon as our friends had dressed and breakfasted, they sallied forth to gain a general view of the city. Evergreen said he thought he ought to wait for his new acquaintance, who had promised to call; but an English merchant, who happened to overhear him, assured him that he must not be delicate on the subject, as the person in question was simply one of the guards of the train, and that he was employed by the police to pick up any information he could about passengers.

“Had he thought you a suspicious character, you would certainly have been honoured by a visit from him,” he added.

“Dear me, if I had said anything treasonable, I should have been whirled off to a dungeon to a certainty,” exclaimed poor Evergreen, shuddering at the thought of the danger he had escaped.

Moscow is one of the most romantic cities in Europe—indeed, there is no other to be compared with it; but our friends had entered it in so ordinary, every-day a manner that at first they could hardly persuade themselves that they had reached a considerable way towards the centre of Russia, and were really and truly in that far-famed city.

“Now, my boys, we will steer a course for the Kremlin,” cried Cousin Giles, having taken the bearings of their hotel as they walked along the street called the Grand Lubianka.

Their course was nearly a straight one. In a little time, crossing an open space, they found themselves before a line of fortified walls, and a gateway, such as they might have expected to see in a picture of China or Tartary, with strange-looking eastern turrets, and domes, and roofs rising within them.

“This must be the Chinese city we have heard of,” said Cousin Giles.

So it was. It is a city within a city. It has three sides, the walls of the Kremlin making the fourth. They passed through the gateway and found themselves in a narrow street, the buildings on either side of them having a still more Chinese appearance. On the left was a little church, with numerous parti-coloured domes, and minarets, and towers, and outside staircases leading nowhere, and railings, and balconies, and little excrescences of roofs, altogether forming an edifice much more like a Chinese than a Christian temple. Close to it, on the left, they saw a long open space, just inside the walls, crowded with people of the lowest order, with booths on either side. This was what may be called the rag fair of Moscow. The booths or shops contain all the articles either for dress or household purposes used by the mujicks. The sellers and purchasers were all talking and laughing, and haggling and chattering away as if the affairs of the nation depended on what they were about, and yet probably a few kopecks would have paid for any one of the articles bought or sold. At the end of the street the travellers came to the entrance of the great bazaar of Moscow, and as they looked down its numerous long alleys, glazed over at the top, they saw lines of little shops,—jewellers, and silversmiths, and makers of images, and hatters, and shoemakers, and tinmen, and trunk-makers, and other workers in leather, and head-dress makers, and blacksmiths, and toy sellers,—indeed, it would be difficult to enumerate all the various trades and handicrafts there represented, each trade being in a row by itself. Each shop was little more than a recess, with a counter in front of it, before which the shopmen stood, praising in loud voices their wares, and inviting passers-by to stop and inspect them. No time, however, was spent at the bazaar, for across a wide open space appeared a high pinnacled wall, with a line of curious green-pointed roofed towers, with golden crescents surmounted by crosses on their summits, and two gateways up a steep slope. Over the walls appeared a confused mass of golden and blue-and-silver domes, and spires, and towers, and green roofs, and crescents, and crosses, and gold and silver chains, glittering in the sun, altogether forming a scene such as is pictured in theArabian Nights Entertainmentsor other Oriental romances, but such as one scarcely expects to find within eight days’ easy journey of sober-minded, old, matter-of-fact England.

“That must be the Kremlin,” exclaimed Fred. “Well, it is a curious place!”

“There can be no doubt about it,” observed Cousin Giles. “And that gate to the left, under the high tower, with the lamp and the picture over it, must be the Holy Gate. Let us go through it. It leads us at once, I see by the map, to the terrace overlooking the river.” As they went down the place towards the river, they found themselves before a fine bronze group on a high pedestal.

“Oh, those must be the statues of the two patriots, Posharskoi, the general who drove away the Tartars, and Minin, the merchant who devoted his fortune to the support of the army with which the victory was won. We will read about them by and by,” said Cousin Giles.

As they stood there, on their right side were the walls of the Kremlin, on their left the front of the bazaar, while some way beyond appeared a most extraordinary-looking church, the Cathedral of Saint Basil. It has nine domes or cupolas,—one large one in the centre, and eight round it, each one painted of a different colour, with various ornaments; some are in stripes, some in checks, some red, some blue, some green, while the structure on which these domes stand consists of all sorts of ins and outs; windows, and stairs, and pillars, and arches—all, too, of different colours, green, and yellow, and red predominating. Harry looked at it for a minute, and then burst into a fit of laughter.

“Well, that is the funniest building I ever saw,” he exclaimed. “It looks as if it was built up of sentry-boxes, and Hansom’s cabs, and dovecots, and windmills, and pig-sties, and all sorts of other things. It was built, I see, by Ivan the Cruel, and it is said that he was so pleased with its strangeness that he put out the eyes of the unfortunate architect, to prevent his ever building another like it.”

“Pleasant gentleman he must have been,” observed Evergreen. “A new way he took to reward merit.”

“Rather an old way,” said Cousin Giles. “I do not think that any sovereign would venture on such a proceeding now-a-days.”

Putting off their visit to the bizarre little cathedral, they turned to the right through the Sacred Gate. Mr Evergreen did not observe that every one passing under it took off his hat, and very nearly got a prod from the sentry’s bayonet for his neglect of that ceremony. The story goes, that the picture over the gateway was unscorched by fire, and that the lamp continued burning all the time the French were in occupation of the city, untrimmed and unattended. A newly-recruited regiment of soldiers, without arms, were marching through, and it was curious to observe each man in succession doff his cap and cross himself as he passed the spot. High and low, rich and poor, all do the same. The only persons who neglected the duty were some wild-looking, dark-eyed lads, whose marked features and olive complexions at once proclaimed them to be Zingari or gipsies, of whom a great number are found in Russia. Moscow is said, like Rome, to stand on seven hills, of which that occupied by the Kremlin is the highest. It is not, however, as much as a hundred feet above the Moscowa, which flows in a horseshoe form directly to the south of it. It is enclosed by four walls of irregular length—that at the west end being so short that the space it occupies is almost triangular. Round the walls are about eighteen towers, which vary in shape and height, though they all have high-pointed roofs covered with green tiles. Outside the walls are gardens with grass, and trees, and gravel walks. In the interior, on the south side, is a magnificent esplanade and terrace overlooking the river, and the strange jumble of coloured buildings which compose the city. The rest of the ground is occupied with a collection of churches of all shapes and sizes and colours, and towers, and convents, and palaces. One palace, however, surpasses them all in beauty and size, though its shining white walls and richly-carved façade and general bran-new appearance look sadly out of place among all the venerable, grotesque, many-coloured, odd-shaped, Byzantine edifices which are dotted about in its neighbourhood. It looks like some huge intruder into the place, which all the old inhabitants are collecting to put forth again; or like an emu in a poultry-yard, at which all the parti-coloured cocks and hens and ducks are crowing, and cackling, and quacking, in a vain endeavour to frighten him out. It required more than one visit to the spot before our friends could learn the geography of the place, and distinguish the numerous churches of all sizes, and heights, and shapes, and varieties of outside and inside adornment. The chief, called the Cathedral, has its walls painted with subjects taken from Scripture, which to the purer taste of Protestants appear shocking and blasphemous. However, our travellers did not then attend to the details of the strange occupants of the Kremlin. Their object was to obtain a comprehensive view of the city from the summit of that gaunt old monster, the Tower of Ivan Veleki. They first, however, examined the huge bell which stands on a pedestal at its foot. This bell was once suspended on the top of a tower, which was burnt, and the bell in its fall had a little piece broken out of it. When they got up to it, they found that this little piece was far too heavy for any ten men to lift, and that the gap it left was big enough for a man to walk through.

The door of the old tower was open, and they mounted a well-conditioned flight of circular steps towards the summit. Having climbed to the top of the first flight, they passed through a door into another tower, where there hung a peal of huge bells,—one more vast than the rest, which, on being struck, gave forth a wondrously musical sound.

“I should not like to be near that fellow while he was ringing,” cried Harry; “he would make noise enough to deafen a rhinoceros.”

They did not stop to hear those famous bells, but climbed on till they stood high above all the surrounding edifices. As they gazed forth from the narrow stone balcony which ran round the dome, they beheld rising on every side a sea of spires, domes, cupolas, minarets, towers, and roofs of every conceivable colour, shape, and size, not altogether unlike a vast garden filled with brobdignagian tulips, but with more hues than any tulip bed ever possessed; and, in addition to the many-coloured tints of the rainbow, there appeared numberless balls of burnished gold and silver, glittering brightly in the sun.

Cousin Giles first ascertained their position by his compass. Turning to the north, they observed in that direction fewer churches, but numerous villas and lines of wood, with the arid steppe beyond them. To the south-west arose the Sparrow Hills, those celebrated heights whence Napoleon and his then victorious army first caught sight of that magic city which they deemed was soon to be the reward of all their toils, but yet which, ere many days had passed, was to prove the cause of their destruction. In the same direction the Moscowa was seen flowing down towards the city, to circle round a portion of it under the walls of the Kremlin, and then to run off again at an acute angle to the east. To the south, on a plain near the banks of the river, rose high above other buildings the red towers and walls of the Donskoy Convent, several other convents, carefully painted of different colours, being scattered about.

“The birds which have their nests there can have no fear of mistaking their proper abodes on their return from their morning flight,” observed Harry, who generally formed quaint notions on what he saw.

Directly below them were the numerous and strange gold, and black, and blue, and green domes of the churches of the Kremlin,—its dark-green pointed towers, its wide gravelled esplanade, the roofs of its vast palaces and public buildings, its belt of turreted walls and gardens with their green lawns and shade-giving trees; but stranger still was the city itself, with its thousands of coloured cupolas, turrets, domes, spires, roofs, and walls. To define this strangeness more clearly, there were domes of bright-blue, with golden stars and golden chains hanging from the golden crosses which surmounted them. There were some domes of size so vast that they looked like huge mountains of gold; some were of dark blue, and others of green and gold; some were black, and others shone like burnished steel; some were perfectly white, others grey, and others of the lightest blue, scarcely to be distinguished from the tint of the azure expanse amid which they reared their heads, except by the golden ball and cross and glittering chains above their summits.

Again, some of the domes were of red and green stripes, and some of bright yellow, and pale yellow, and red; and some towers were surmounted by gigantic crowns, open and outspreading, as well as globe-like. The roofs and walls also exhibited a strange difference in their tints, though green, and red, and black, and grey, and brown predominated among the first; while the latter were white, and buff, and green, and blue, and deep red, and pink. Truly it was a strange scene, such as they had never before beheld, and could scarcely hope to behold elsewhere.

They returned to the top of the tower again in the evening, just as the setting sun was throwing his glory giving rays across this richly-jewelled expanse, which shone forth in a perfect blaze of light, coloured by every hue of which the rainbow can boast.

It is difficult to imagine the vast number of domes and cupolas which meet the eye in this strange city. There are said to be a thousand churches, though probably there are not so many. Few of these churches have less than five domes, and some have ten. Each tower also has a dome on its top, surmounted by a golden cross and chains. A large proportion of these domes are covered with gold, and some with sheets of silver; the others are either black and white, or of the various hues already described. Moscow may, indeed, most properly be called the Golden City. The only rule which the church architect here appears to observe is, to endeavour to make every new church as dissimilar as possible to every other existing in the city, in colour, shape, and size; yet they all evidently belong to the same style.

Altogether the venerable Kremlin and the buildings it contains, with the mass of coloured edifices which surround it, form one of the strangest architectural jumbles in the universe.

Chapter Eight.Visit to the Imperial Palace in the Kremlin—The Granovitaya. Palata—The Terema, or Ancient Palace of the Czars—Cathedral of Uspensky Sabor—Rarity of Good Paintings in the Russian Churches—Public Discussions on Religion—Traps for the Unwary—Procession of Russian Monks—New Church of Saint Saviour—Preparations for the Coronation—Cathedral of Saint Basil—Sealing up Doors of Shops at Night—Shopmen bowing to Saints—Bazaar—Chinese City—Russian Vehicles.Our friends got a good general idea of the city during the first day of their residence in it. The next day they obtained tickets of admission to the Imperial Palaces in the Kremlin, through a gentleman to whom Cousin Giles had letters. They were accompanied in their visit by some French friends of his. They were first shown the private rooms of the Emperor and Empress, which had just been refurnished for their reception after the coronation. All these rooms were on the ground floor. In the centre of each was a large square pillar, supporting the storey above. These pillars, with several screens and curtains in each room, made them appear small and positively cosy, such as may be found in the house of moderate size belonging to any lady or gentleman of somewhat luxurious habits. English people would probably have chosen a more airy situation for their private abode than the ground floor; but from the lowness of these rooms they are more easily warmed in winter, and from their being vaulted they are cooler in summer. After visiting the private rooms, their guide conducted them up-stairs, when they passed through several fine halls, similar in grandeur to those in the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg, and along galleries filled with pictures of very doubtful merit.Through an opening in the new palace they walked into one of the old palaces called the Granovitaya Palata. The second floor is occupied entirely by the coronation hall of the Emperors. It is a low, vaulted chamber, the arches resting on a huge square pillar in the centre. Here the Emperor, clothed in royal robes, for the first time after his coronation, sits in state, surrounded by his nobles, eating his dinner.“Ah, I see emperors have to eat like other people,” observed Harry when he was told this. “I wonder, now, what the new Emperor will have for dinner.”By far the most interesting building in the Kremlin is the ancient palace of the Czars, called the Terema. It is complete as a residence in itself, but the halls and sleeping-rooms are remarkably small compared to those of the huge modern edifice by its side. The walls from top to bottom are covered with the most strange arabesque devices which imagination could design—birds, beasts, and fish, interwoven with leaves and sea-weed of every description. In each room a different tint predominates, although the same style of ornament is carried throughout, and the same colours are to be found in each. Thus there is the green room, the blue room, and the yellow room, and many other coloured rooms. The ornaments on the banisters, screens, railings, and cornices are great wooden heads of beasts—lions, or tigers, or monsters of some sort. The part of the walls enclosing the stoves are of curiously coloured tiles; indeed, the whole building is a most bizarre, strange place, a perfect specimen of a Byzantine palace. In variety of colouring it is something like the Alhambra, but, though equally wonderful, it is barbarous in the extreme compared to that celebrated edifice of Southern Spain. Our travellers climbed to the top of this strange little palace, and went out on the roof, whence they looked down on a whole mass of golden and coloured domes and minarets, a considerable number of them belonging to the smallest and most ancient church in the Kremlin. In the Granovitaya Palata is a window, at which the Emperor shows himself on state occasions to the troops, drawn up on the parade. It is one of the windows of the Hall of Justice, and here suppliants used to be drawn up in a basket, to present their petitions and to hear judgment pronounced.“It would have been a convenient way of getting rid of a troublesome petitioner to let it and the petitioner come down together by the run, as you would say, Cousin Giles,” observed Fred, laughing. “Some such idea was probably in the minds of the inventors of the custom.”From the old palaces the party proceeded to the Treasury. It is beautifully arranged, and full of arms and armour of all ages—the coats, and boots, and hats, or crowns, or helmets, and swords, or battle-axes of all the Czars who ever sat on the throne of Russia. Some of the crowns, or other head-pieces, are literally covered with jewels, placed as close together as the setting will allow. Most of them are rather curious than elegant; indeed, they nearly all look as if they belonged to a barbarous age and people.Among other curious things there is a globe, studded with jewels, sent by the Greek Emperor to Prince Waldemar, and the crown of the King of Georgia, the diamond crown of Peter the Great, and the throne on which Peter and his brother, both children at the time, were placed when he was crowned. There is a curtain at the back, behind which their mother stood, and, putting her hands through it, held them in, and guided them to make the proper signs at the right moment, which movements caused much wonder and admiration among the admiring multitude.In the armoury is the chair of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. It is like a litter, somewhat rudely constructed, or rather can be used as a chair or litter by turns, having poles at the side by which it is carried. There are some battered-looking kettle-drums, one belonging to the same monarch. They were part of the spoils taken by Peter the Great at the celebrated battle of Pultova, when the Russians at length gained a victory over the Swedes, and Charles himself, hitherto victorious, was obliged to seek safety in flight. The most curious articles in the Museum are, however, the carriages, specimens of which are preserved from the earliest times in which they were used. They are, as may be supposed, huge, lumbering, gingerbread, lord-mayor-looking affairs. In some the coach-box is several yards from the body, and the hind seat is as many from it at the other end. There is a patriarch’s carriage, like a huge square trunk, and the travelling carriage of Catherine, which has a table in the centre, and is very like a modern saloon railway carriage. It is placed on runners instead of wheels, and could only have been used in winter. Probably in her day the roads would not have encouraged summer travelling.From thence the friends went to the Uspensky Sabor, the cathedral church in which the Emperors are crowned. The lofty roof is supported by four round pillars, covered from capital to base with sheets of gold and paintings. There is not a particle of the church which is not thus ornamented. The effect is rich in the extreme, at the same time bizarre and barbaric. There are five cupolas, with the faces of saints looking down from each. An artist was making a drawing of the interior, introducing the coronation—as it was to be. The picture was for the Emperor. The outside of this church is ornamented with subjects totally at variance with anything like a pure taste. There are several other churches near it, all of which were being enclosed so as to form a spacious court, where the ceremony of the Emperor’s coronation was to take place. Every available space was being filled with galleries to hold spectators. Through this court he was to walk from the cathedral to the palace.The party then visited all the churches in the Kremlin in succession. The interior walls are mostly covered with gilding and pictures of saints, from base to cupola. In some of them, which are dimly lighted with tapers, priests, in their gorgeous vestments, were chanting, with fine sonorous voices, the evening service; incense was being waved, and people from all sides were rushing in and bowing and crossing themselves, and as quickly rushing out again. The Russians of the Greek Church seem to think that much virtue exists in visiting a number of churches or shrines in quick succession on the same day; and certainly Moscow offers great facilities to the performance of this ceremony, for a person cannot go many hundred yards in any direction without meeting with a church, or chapel, or shrine of some sort. The churches in Moscow do not generally possess any fine paintings, the pictures of their saints showing merely the faces and heads. But there is one church, that of Le Vieux Croyants à la Ragosky, which has a fine collection. The priests of that church, being intelligent men, value it properly.A gentleman who joined our friends gave them several bits of interesting information.The small old church in the Kremlin was being renovated; nothing but the whitewashed walls remained. They found that the gilding and paintings which appeared so rich in the churches were merely fastened to wooden or canvas panels, and placed against the walls, so that a day was sufficient to turn a barn into a magnificent cathedral. He pointed out that the gates were of different sizes. The largest was for the admission of the Patriarch when he came to the church, the smaller for that of the ordinary members of the community.“Exactly,” said Harry, “like the Irish peasant who has a big hole in the door for the pigs to walk through, and a small one for the chickens. All people are much alike.”Religious liberty is very much curbed in the country; but they were told that every Sunday, at the Church of the Assumption, an open discussion on matters of religion takes place, chiefly, however, among the persons who wish to pass for savants. The priests seldom or never attend. It is suspected that these discussions are encouraged by the Government, not from any abstract love it possesses for truth, but for the sake of ascertaining the opinions of those who attend them. If the governing powers suspect, from any of the opinions he utters, that a person is likely to prove dangerous, his movements and words are ever afterwards narrowly watched till he is caught tripping, when he is without further ceremony marched out of harm’s way into Siberia.As the party were walking round the Kremlin, they passed, outside the Arsenal, a number of guns of all sizes, many of them very beautiful.“All those guns were taken from us,” observed one of their French friends to Cousin Giles. “How curiously things change in this world! Now, in early days our two nations were cutting each other’s throats, and yours was friendly to Russia; then lately we have been fighting side by side against the Russians. Now, behold, here we are walking freely and at peace within the walls of this ancient capital.”Thus discoursing, they descended into the gardens on the west side, and proceeded towards the Church of Saint Saviour, then in course of erection.Their French friend smiled again: “Ah, this church, now, is building to commemorate the retreat of the French from Russia,” he observed. “The Russians may well boast of what they did in those days, and we are not likely to forget it.”The church is the finest in Moscow; the exterior is of white stone, ornamented with groups of figures in the deepest relief. The architecture is of the purest Byzantine order. The interior presented but one vast vault of brick, without pillars or any other support but the walls to its vast dome. Part of the walls were covered with wood painted in imitation of marble, to show the effect of the proposed style of ornament. It is in the form of a Greek cross. The altar is at the east end. The church is warmed by means of several large stoves, whence pipes are carried inside the walls all round the building, with vents at intervals, out of which the hot air can be allowed to escape. Broad flights of stone steps lead up to the entrances, which are on three sides. Cousin Giles altogether preferred the edifice to that of the Isaac Church in Saint Petersburg.As our friends were returning homeward, a religious procession passed by. It consisted of a long line of priests walking two and three abreast, in somewhat irregular order, bearing banners of gold and coloured cloths, fringed and bespangled. They were chanting loudly, but not inharmoniously. Most of them had long straggling locks, which waved about in the breeze, and gave them a very wild appearance, which was increased by the careless, independent way in which they walked along.The Russian priests seem to consider that, like the Nazarites among the Jews, an especial virtue exists in the length of their hair. As the procession passed through the streets, the people rushed out of their houses, or crowded to the turnings, eager to see the sight. There they stood, devoutly bowing and crossing themselves, though it was difficult to say what particular object claimed this respect. Altogether the procession, from the wild look of the priests, their loud voices, and the gaudy banners waving in the air, had much more of a heathen than a Christian character.Vast preparations were at this time making for the expected coronation. The spires and domes and walls of all the churches and public buildings were being covered with laths, on which to hang the lamps for the illumination of the city.Magnificent arches were being erected all round the large square opposite the Imperial Theatre; but they were of wood, and, though painted to look like stone, here and there bits of the pine peeped forth, showing the unsubstantial nature of the highly-pretentious fabric. Workmen also crowded the churches, furbishing up gilt candlesticks, refreshing the features of saints, adding rubies to their faded lips and lustre to their eyes, cleaning and polishing in all directions. Cousin Giles said it put him in mind of being behind the scenes of a theatre,—carpenters, painters, and gilders were everywhere to be seen; their saws and axes, their trowels and brushes seemed to have no rest; nor could they afford it, for they were evidently much behindhand with their preparations. Such furbishing, and painting, and washing, Moscow never before enjoyed. The whole circuit of the walls of the Kremlin, and its numerous towers, as well as the buildings in the interior, were covered, from pinnacle and parapet to the base, with a network of laths; so was the Cathedral of Saint Basil, and, indeed, every edifice in the neighbourhood. When the whole was lighted up, they agreed that the spectacle would be very fine, but they began to doubt whether it would be worth while to return to the city for the play itself after having witnessed all the preparations.Cousin Giles told his companions that it is said that, when the Empress Catherine used to make a progress through her dominions, the peasants were driven up from all quarters towards the high road, and that wooden houses were run up just before her to represent thriving villages. As soon as she had passed they were pulled down again and carried on ahead to do duty a second time, the mujicks, meanwhile, being compelled to pace up and down before their pretended abodes, as Swiss peasants do before the pasteboard cottages on the stage.People in Moscow were looking forward with eager expectation to the event of the coronation, and it was supposed that half the great people of Europe would be there. It did not appear, however, that the inhabitants were so anxious to see them for their own sakes as they were to let their houses and lodgings and rooms at hotels at exorbitantly high prices, every one expecting to reap a fine harvest out of the pockets of the gaping foreigners.The most curious church, perhaps, in the world—the most outrageously strange of all the bizarre churches of Moscow—is the Cathedral of Saint Basil, which stands close to the river, at the north end of a broad, open space outside the walls of the Kremlin, and which space is bounded on the other side by the Bazaar. It is in the mostoutréstyle of Byzantine architecture. There is a large tower somewhere about the centre, running up into a spire, and eight other towers round it, with cupolas on their summits. There is also a ninth tower, which looks like an excrescence, in the rear. Each of these cupolas and towers is painted in a different way, and of different colours; some are in stripes, others in a diamond-shaped pattern, others of a corkscrew pattern, and some have excrescences like horse-chestnuts covering them. Then there are galleries and steps, and ins and outs of all sorts, painted with circles, and arches, and stripes of every possible colour.“Well, that is a funny church!” exclaimed Harry, as Fred ran off to find the keepers to show them the entrance.“An odd epithet to bestow on a church,” observed Cousin Giles; “but I cannot find a better.”Underneath the building there is a chapel, which has no connection with the upper portion. A flight of steps led them into the building. Each of the nine domes and the pinnacle covers a separate chapel, which is again divided by a screen into two parts—one for the priests, the other for the worshippers. From each of the domes above, a gigantic face of the Virgin, or of some saint, looks down on those below. The huge, calm-eyed faces gazing from so great a height have a very curious effect. In the interior of the pinnacle a dove is seen floating, as it were, in the air. Every portion of the interior walls of this strange edifice is covered with the same sort of richly and many-coloured arabesque designs seen in the old palace, while a sort of gallery runs round the building, with an opening into all the chapels.“A capital hide-and-seek place,” exclaimed Harry. “Why, Fred, I would undertake to dodge round here all my life, and you should not catch me till I had grown into an old grey-headed man.”“You might find a more profitable way of spending your earthly existence,” said Cousin Giles; “yet I fear many people come in and go out of the world, and yet are of very little more use than you would thus be in their generation.”“Oh, I know that, Cousin Giles; I am only joking. I want to try how useful I can be when I grow up, and how much good I can do.”“You can be useful in many ways, even now,” observed their friend. “You are useful if you set a good example to those with whom you associate. You are doing God service if you show others that you are guided by His laws, if you act in obedience to Him, if you confess Him openly before men. All this can be done at every period of life. The old and young can and must do it, if they hope for a happy hereafter, if they love the Saviour who died for them; but more especially the young can do it, while health and strength and clear unworn intellects are theirs.”Just after they left the cathedral, the bell of Ivan Veleki tolled forth the hour of evening, and numbers of shopkeepers, long-coated and long-bearded, rushed forth from their booths, and commenced a series of bowings and crossings, looking towards the Holy Gate of the Kremlin, which was directly in front of them. Having performed this ceremony for some time, they faced about towards another shrine at the north end of the square, and went through the same ceremony. By advancing a little into the open space, they could get a glance at another picture of some saint, when they bowed and crossed themselves as before. When their evening’s devotions were thus concluded, they went back to close their shops. Having put up the shutters, or closed the folding-doors which enclosed the front, one man held a candle, while another, with seal and sealing-wax, put his signet, with the likeness of his patron saint, to the door. No padlock or other means of securing it were used. Some Jews and Tartars, not possessing the same confidence in the protecting power of the saints, put padlocks on their doors. Very curious affairs these padlocks are. They have been copied from the Tartars, or rather from the Chinese. The key is a screw: by taking the screw out, the padlock shuts; by screwing it in, it opens. As the shrines which claim the poor Russians’ devotion exist in every direction,—indeed, they cannot walk twenty yards without seeing them,—while they run along on their daily avocations they are continually bowing and crossing themselves. The pictures of the saints which adorn these shrines were probably intended to remind people of their religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints as the Roman Catholics do to the statues of theirs.One of the most amusing places our friends visited in Moscow was the great bazaar in the Chinese City. They made frequent trips through it, although their purchases were neither very extensive nor expensive. They bought some slippers made by the Tartars of Kazan, of gold and silk and silver thread, beautifully worked, and some ornaments of silver and steel made by the same people, and wooden bowls and spoons used by the peasants, as well as their leather purses and cotton sashes of many colours, and winter boots of white felt, and the head-dresses worn by the women, and a hat such as is worn by ishvoshtsticks, and many other things, all helping to illustrate the customs of the people. Among them was a samovar or tea-urn. It is in shape like an ancient urn. In the centre is a cylinder with a grating at the bottom. The water is held in the space between the cylinder and the sides of the urn. It is filled with water, and then a small piece of ignited charcoal is dropped into the cylinder, which is filled with black charcoal. A chimney is then placed above the charcoal, which now ignites and boils the water. By adding fresh charcoal and more water, a supply can be kept up for hours together. A frame fits on above the chimney, on which the teapot can be placed, to keep it warm, while a lid, called a damper, is used to put out the fire.These samovars are used on all occasions, and are especially valued by the peasants at their picnics or open-air tea-parties, of which they are very fond. They purchased also several prints of the city, and some very amusing ones descriptive of the battles between the Russians and the Allies, or the Turks or Circassians, by which it appeared that the accounts received by the rest of the world must be totally incorrect, as in all instances, at the Alma, Inkermann, in the Caucasus, the Muscovites were signally victorious, their enemy flying like chaff before them.The Chinese City, or Kitai Gorod, to the east of the Kremlin, was one of their favourite resorts. The name is most appropriate; and certainly it is most unlike any place in Europe. It is enclosed on three sides by a thick buttressed and round-towered wall, the upper part of which projects considerably; and altogether, from its strange style of architecture, it looks as if it had been imported bodily from some city of the Celestial Empire. The fourth side is formed by the east walls of the Kremlin, of which the Kitai Gorod appears to have been an outwork. The interior contains two long streets, and several smaller ones, besides the truly Oriental bazaar, already spoken of, with its numerous narrow lanes, running under one vast roof, dirty and mean, and crowded with shops of every possible description. Tea-sellers, with their Chinese signboards; paper-sellers, ironmongers, and perfumery and spices, silks and cottons, and shoes and hats, and trunk-makers and workers in leather,—indeed it is useless to enumerate all the trades there carried on. There is generally a row or half a row of the stalls of each trade together. As visitors pass along, the long-coated dealers rush eagerly forward, and with bows and grimaces endeavour to induce them to become customers. Here also the dealers in the holy pictures, or images, as they are called, are to be found. These pictures have the faces and hands only shown, the rest being covered with a casing of gold or silver. They are of all sizes, from two feet to one or two inches square; but as even for the smallest our friends were asked four roubles, they declined buying any of them. Here, also, are sold cups and censers, and all sorts of utensils used in churches. The travellers, however, were little disposed to become purchasers.Near the bazaar stood, ready to start, three or four diligences—huge black machines, having a vast boot behind, a roomy inside, and a large, comfortable-lookingcoupé. They were bound for Nishni-Novogorood, where a large fair was taking place. Several rough-looking carts followed them, piled up with goods for the same destination. The fair of Nishni is the largest in Russia, perhaps in the world, at the present day. Here the merchants from the west meet the traders and producers from the numerous countries bordering Russia on the east, as well as from all the Russian provinces, and exchange their various commodities. Here transactions are arranged not only for the present, but for the following year, and many a farmer undertakes to deliver timber, and flax, and hemp still growing thousands of miles away, or hides and wool yet adhering to the backs of his cattle or sheep on the far-off prairies, or thousands of sacks of wheat yet ungrown, at Saint Petersburg, Riga, or Odessa, with every certainty of being able to fulfil his contract. Our friends were so interested with the account they heard of Nishni that they were eager to visit it. Russian carts are curious vehicles, made without a particle of iron. The wheels are kept on by various contrivances; some have bits of wood from the projecting edge of the side, into which the ends of the axles fit; others have bows of wood from the perch, which fit on over the axle where the linch-pin should be. The carts used for conveying passengers are covered with an awning of black canvas, and look as if they were water-tight, with a fair possibility of being made comfortable.The travellers had many other things to see, both in and about Moscow, but they resolved not to delay longer than necessary, as they were anxious to study more of the manners and customs of the people in the interior; and they therefore made preparations for their further progress into the country.

Visit to the Imperial Palace in the Kremlin—The Granovitaya. Palata—The Terema, or Ancient Palace of the Czars—Cathedral of Uspensky Sabor—Rarity of Good Paintings in the Russian Churches—Public Discussions on Religion—Traps for the Unwary—Procession of Russian Monks—New Church of Saint Saviour—Preparations for the Coronation—Cathedral of Saint Basil—Sealing up Doors of Shops at Night—Shopmen bowing to Saints—Bazaar—Chinese City—Russian Vehicles.

Visit to the Imperial Palace in the Kremlin—The Granovitaya. Palata—The Terema, or Ancient Palace of the Czars—Cathedral of Uspensky Sabor—Rarity of Good Paintings in the Russian Churches—Public Discussions on Religion—Traps for the Unwary—Procession of Russian Monks—New Church of Saint Saviour—Preparations for the Coronation—Cathedral of Saint Basil—Sealing up Doors of Shops at Night—Shopmen bowing to Saints—Bazaar—Chinese City—Russian Vehicles.

Our friends got a good general idea of the city during the first day of their residence in it. The next day they obtained tickets of admission to the Imperial Palaces in the Kremlin, through a gentleman to whom Cousin Giles had letters. They were accompanied in their visit by some French friends of his. They were first shown the private rooms of the Emperor and Empress, which had just been refurnished for their reception after the coronation. All these rooms were on the ground floor. In the centre of each was a large square pillar, supporting the storey above. These pillars, with several screens and curtains in each room, made them appear small and positively cosy, such as may be found in the house of moderate size belonging to any lady or gentleman of somewhat luxurious habits. English people would probably have chosen a more airy situation for their private abode than the ground floor; but from the lowness of these rooms they are more easily warmed in winter, and from their being vaulted they are cooler in summer. After visiting the private rooms, their guide conducted them up-stairs, when they passed through several fine halls, similar in grandeur to those in the Hermitage at Saint Petersburg, and along galleries filled with pictures of very doubtful merit.

Through an opening in the new palace they walked into one of the old palaces called the Granovitaya Palata. The second floor is occupied entirely by the coronation hall of the Emperors. It is a low, vaulted chamber, the arches resting on a huge square pillar in the centre. Here the Emperor, clothed in royal robes, for the first time after his coronation, sits in state, surrounded by his nobles, eating his dinner.

“Ah, I see emperors have to eat like other people,” observed Harry when he was told this. “I wonder, now, what the new Emperor will have for dinner.”

By far the most interesting building in the Kremlin is the ancient palace of the Czars, called the Terema. It is complete as a residence in itself, but the halls and sleeping-rooms are remarkably small compared to those of the huge modern edifice by its side. The walls from top to bottom are covered with the most strange arabesque devices which imagination could design—birds, beasts, and fish, interwoven with leaves and sea-weed of every description. In each room a different tint predominates, although the same style of ornament is carried throughout, and the same colours are to be found in each. Thus there is the green room, the blue room, and the yellow room, and many other coloured rooms. The ornaments on the banisters, screens, railings, and cornices are great wooden heads of beasts—lions, or tigers, or monsters of some sort. The part of the walls enclosing the stoves are of curiously coloured tiles; indeed, the whole building is a most bizarre, strange place, a perfect specimen of a Byzantine palace. In variety of colouring it is something like the Alhambra, but, though equally wonderful, it is barbarous in the extreme compared to that celebrated edifice of Southern Spain. Our travellers climbed to the top of this strange little palace, and went out on the roof, whence they looked down on a whole mass of golden and coloured domes and minarets, a considerable number of them belonging to the smallest and most ancient church in the Kremlin. In the Granovitaya Palata is a window, at which the Emperor shows himself on state occasions to the troops, drawn up on the parade. It is one of the windows of the Hall of Justice, and here suppliants used to be drawn up in a basket, to present their petitions and to hear judgment pronounced.

“It would have been a convenient way of getting rid of a troublesome petitioner to let it and the petitioner come down together by the run, as you would say, Cousin Giles,” observed Fred, laughing. “Some such idea was probably in the minds of the inventors of the custom.”

From the old palaces the party proceeded to the Treasury. It is beautifully arranged, and full of arms and armour of all ages—the coats, and boots, and hats, or crowns, or helmets, and swords, or battle-axes of all the Czars who ever sat on the throne of Russia. Some of the crowns, or other head-pieces, are literally covered with jewels, placed as close together as the setting will allow. Most of them are rather curious than elegant; indeed, they nearly all look as if they belonged to a barbarous age and people.

Among other curious things there is a globe, studded with jewels, sent by the Greek Emperor to Prince Waldemar, and the crown of the King of Georgia, the diamond crown of Peter the Great, and the throne on which Peter and his brother, both children at the time, were placed when he was crowned. There is a curtain at the back, behind which their mother stood, and, putting her hands through it, held them in, and guided them to make the proper signs at the right moment, which movements caused much wonder and admiration among the admiring multitude.

In the armoury is the chair of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden. It is like a litter, somewhat rudely constructed, or rather can be used as a chair or litter by turns, having poles at the side by which it is carried. There are some battered-looking kettle-drums, one belonging to the same monarch. They were part of the spoils taken by Peter the Great at the celebrated battle of Pultova, when the Russians at length gained a victory over the Swedes, and Charles himself, hitherto victorious, was obliged to seek safety in flight. The most curious articles in the Museum are, however, the carriages, specimens of which are preserved from the earliest times in which they were used. They are, as may be supposed, huge, lumbering, gingerbread, lord-mayor-looking affairs. In some the coach-box is several yards from the body, and the hind seat is as many from it at the other end. There is a patriarch’s carriage, like a huge square trunk, and the travelling carriage of Catherine, which has a table in the centre, and is very like a modern saloon railway carriage. It is placed on runners instead of wheels, and could only have been used in winter. Probably in her day the roads would not have encouraged summer travelling.

From thence the friends went to the Uspensky Sabor, the cathedral church in which the Emperors are crowned. The lofty roof is supported by four round pillars, covered from capital to base with sheets of gold and paintings. There is not a particle of the church which is not thus ornamented. The effect is rich in the extreme, at the same time bizarre and barbaric. There are five cupolas, with the faces of saints looking down from each. An artist was making a drawing of the interior, introducing the coronation—as it was to be. The picture was for the Emperor. The outside of this church is ornamented with subjects totally at variance with anything like a pure taste. There are several other churches near it, all of which were being enclosed so as to form a spacious court, where the ceremony of the Emperor’s coronation was to take place. Every available space was being filled with galleries to hold spectators. Through this court he was to walk from the cathedral to the palace.

The party then visited all the churches in the Kremlin in succession. The interior walls are mostly covered with gilding and pictures of saints, from base to cupola. In some of them, which are dimly lighted with tapers, priests, in their gorgeous vestments, were chanting, with fine sonorous voices, the evening service; incense was being waved, and people from all sides were rushing in and bowing and crossing themselves, and as quickly rushing out again. The Russians of the Greek Church seem to think that much virtue exists in visiting a number of churches or shrines in quick succession on the same day; and certainly Moscow offers great facilities to the performance of this ceremony, for a person cannot go many hundred yards in any direction without meeting with a church, or chapel, or shrine of some sort. The churches in Moscow do not generally possess any fine paintings, the pictures of their saints showing merely the faces and heads. But there is one church, that of Le Vieux Croyants à la Ragosky, which has a fine collection. The priests of that church, being intelligent men, value it properly.

A gentleman who joined our friends gave them several bits of interesting information.

The small old church in the Kremlin was being renovated; nothing but the whitewashed walls remained. They found that the gilding and paintings which appeared so rich in the churches were merely fastened to wooden or canvas panels, and placed against the walls, so that a day was sufficient to turn a barn into a magnificent cathedral. He pointed out that the gates were of different sizes. The largest was for the admission of the Patriarch when he came to the church, the smaller for that of the ordinary members of the community.

“Exactly,” said Harry, “like the Irish peasant who has a big hole in the door for the pigs to walk through, and a small one for the chickens. All people are much alike.”

Religious liberty is very much curbed in the country; but they were told that every Sunday, at the Church of the Assumption, an open discussion on matters of religion takes place, chiefly, however, among the persons who wish to pass for savants. The priests seldom or never attend. It is suspected that these discussions are encouraged by the Government, not from any abstract love it possesses for truth, but for the sake of ascertaining the opinions of those who attend them. If the governing powers suspect, from any of the opinions he utters, that a person is likely to prove dangerous, his movements and words are ever afterwards narrowly watched till he is caught tripping, when he is without further ceremony marched out of harm’s way into Siberia.

As the party were walking round the Kremlin, they passed, outside the Arsenal, a number of guns of all sizes, many of them very beautiful.

“All those guns were taken from us,” observed one of their French friends to Cousin Giles. “How curiously things change in this world! Now, in early days our two nations were cutting each other’s throats, and yours was friendly to Russia; then lately we have been fighting side by side against the Russians. Now, behold, here we are walking freely and at peace within the walls of this ancient capital.”

Thus discoursing, they descended into the gardens on the west side, and proceeded towards the Church of Saint Saviour, then in course of erection.

Their French friend smiled again: “Ah, this church, now, is building to commemorate the retreat of the French from Russia,” he observed. “The Russians may well boast of what they did in those days, and we are not likely to forget it.”

The church is the finest in Moscow; the exterior is of white stone, ornamented with groups of figures in the deepest relief. The architecture is of the purest Byzantine order. The interior presented but one vast vault of brick, without pillars or any other support but the walls to its vast dome. Part of the walls were covered with wood painted in imitation of marble, to show the effect of the proposed style of ornament. It is in the form of a Greek cross. The altar is at the east end. The church is warmed by means of several large stoves, whence pipes are carried inside the walls all round the building, with vents at intervals, out of which the hot air can be allowed to escape. Broad flights of stone steps lead up to the entrances, which are on three sides. Cousin Giles altogether preferred the edifice to that of the Isaac Church in Saint Petersburg.

As our friends were returning homeward, a religious procession passed by. It consisted of a long line of priests walking two and three abreast, in somewhat irregular order, bearing banners of gold and coloured cloths, fringed and bespangled. They were chanting loudly, but not inharmoniously. Most of them had long straggling locks, which waved about in the breeze, and gave them a very wild appearance, which was increased by the careless, independent way in which they walked along.

The Russian priests seem to consider that, like the Nazarites among the Jews, an especial virtue exists in the length of their hair. As the procession passed through the streets, the people rushed out of their houses, or crowded to the turnings, eager to see the sight. There they stood, devoutly bowing and crossing themselves, though it was difficult to say what particular object claimed this respect. Altogether the procession, from the wild look of the priests, their loud voices, and the gaudy banners waving in the air, had much more of a heathen than a Christian character.

Vast preparations were at this time making for the expected coronation. The spires and domes and walls of all the churches and public buildings were being covered with laths, on which to hang the lamps for the illumination of the city.

Magnificent arches were being erected all round the large square opposite the Imperial Theatre; but they were of wood, and, though painted to look like stone, here and there bits of the pine peeped forth, showing the unsubstantial nature of the highly-pretentious fabric. Workmen also crowded the churches, furbishing up gilt candlesticks, refreshing the features of saints, adding rubies to their faded lips and lustre to their eyes, cleaning and polishing in all directions. Cousin Giles said it put him in mind of being behind the scenes of a theatre,—carpenters, painters, and gilders were everywhere to be seen; their saws and axes, their trowels and brushes seemed to have no rest; nor could they afford it, for they were evidently much behindhand with their preparations. Such furbishing, and painting, and washing, Moscow never before enjoyed. The whole circuit of the walls of the Kremlin, and its numerous towers, as well as the buildings in the interior, were covered, from pinnacle and parapet to the base, with a network of laths; so was the Cathedral of Saint Basil, and, indeed, every edifice in the neighbourhood. When the whole was lighted up, they agreed that the spectacle would be very fine, but they began to doubt whether it would be worth while to return to the city for the play itself after having witnessed all the preparations.

Cousin Giles told his companions that it is said that, when the Empress Catherine used to make a progress through her dominions, the peasants were driven up from all quarters towards the high road, and that wooden houses were run up just before her to represent thriving villages. As soon as she had passed they were pulled down again and carried on ahead to do duty a second time, the mujicks, meanwhile, being compelled to pace up and down before their pretended abodes, as Swiss peasants do before the pasteboard cottages on the stage.

People in Moscow were looking forward with eager expectation to the event of the coronation, and it was supposed that half the great people of Europe would be there. It did not appear, however, that the inhabitants were so anxious to see them for their own sakes as they were to let their houses and lodgings and rooms at hotels at exorbitantly high prices, every one expecting to reap a fine harvest out of the pockets of the gaping foreigners.

The most curious church, perhaps, in the world—the most outrageously strange of all the bizarre churches of Moscow—is the Cathedral of Saint Basil, which stands close to the river, at the north end of a broad, open space outside the walls of the Kremlin, and which space is bounded on the other side by the Bazaar. It is in the mostoutréstyle of Byzantine architecture. There is a large tower somewhere about the centre, running up into a spire, and eight other towers round it, with cupolas on their summits. There is also a ninth tower, which looks like an excrescence, in the rear. Each of these cupolas and towers is painted in a different way, and of different colours; some are in stripes, others in a diamond-shaped pattern, others of a corkscrew pattern, and some have excrescences like horse-chestnuts covering them. Then there are galleries and steps, and ins and outs of all sorts, painted with circles, and arches, and stripes of every possible colour.

“Well, that is a funny church!” exclaimed Harry, as Fred ran off to find the keepers to show them the entrance.

“An odd epithet to bestow on a church,” observed Cousin Giles; “but I cannot find a better.”

Underneath the building there is a chapel, which has no connection with the upper portion. A flight of steps led them into the building. Each of the nine domes and the pinnacle covers a separate chapel, which is again divided by a screen into two parts—one for the priests, the other for the worshippers. From each of the domes above, a gigantic face of the Virgin, or of some saint, looks down on those below. The huge, calm-eyed faces gazing from so great a height have a very curious effect. In the interior of the pinnacle a dove is seen floating, as it were, in the air. Every portion of the interior walls of this strange edifice is covered with the same sort of richly and many-coloured arabesque designs seen in the old palace, while a sort of gallery runs round the building, with an opening into all the chapels.

“A capital hide-and-seek place,” exclaimed Harry. “Why, Fred, I would undertake to dodge round here all my life, and you should not catch me till I had grown into an old grey-headed man.”

“You might find a more profitable way of spending your earthly existence,” said Cousin Giles; “yet I fear many people come in and go out of the world, and yet are of very little more use than you would thus be in their generation.”

“Oh, I know that, Cousin Giles; I am only joking. I want to try how useful I can be when I grow up, and how much good I can do.”

“You can be useful in many ways, even now,” observed their friend. “You are useful if you set a good example to those with whom you associate. You are doing God service if you show others that you are guided by His laws, if you act in obedience to Him, if you confess Him openly before men. All this can be done at every period of life. The old and young can and must do it, if they hope for a happy hereafter, if they love the Saviour who died for them; but more especially the young can do it, while health and strength and clear unworn intellects are theirs.”

Just after they left the cathedral, the bell of Ivan Veleki tolled forth the hour of evening, and numbers of shopkeepers, long-coated and long-bearded, rushed forth from their booths, and commenced a series of bowings and crossings, looking towards the Holy Gate of the Kremlin, which was directly in front of them. Having performed this ceremony for some time, they faced about towards another shrine at the north end of the square, and went through the same ceremony. By advancing a little into the open space, they could get a glance at another picture of some saint, when they bowed and crossed themselves as before. When their evening’s devotions were thus concluded, they went back to close their shops. Having put up the shutters, or closed the folding-doors which enclosed the front, one man held a candle, while another, with seal and sealing-wax, put his signet, with the likeness of his patron saint, to the door. No padlock or other means of securing it were used. Some Jews and Tartars, not possessing the same confidence in the protecting power of the saints, put padlocks on their doors. Very curious affairs these padlocks are. They have been copied from the Tartars, or rather from the Chinese. The key is a screw: by taking the screw out, the padlock shuts; by screwing it in, it opens. As the shrines which claim the poor Russians’ devotion exist in every direction,—indeed, they cannot walk twenty yards without seeing them,—while they run along on their daily avocations they are continually bowing and crossing themselves. The pictures of the saints which adorn these shrines were probably intended to remind people of their religious duties; but, like other unwise human inventions, which do not take into consideration the evil tendencies of the human mind, they have led to a system of degrading idolatry, while the simple truths of Christianity have been superseded by a flimsy tissue of falsehoods. Although the members of the Greek Church are iconoclasts, or image-breakers, and allow no actual images to be set up on their altars, it must be owned that they pay just as much adoration to the pictures of their saints as the Roman Catholics do to the statues of theirs.

One of the most amusing places our friends visited in Moscow was the great bazaar in the Chinese City. They made frequent trips through it, although their purchases were neither very extensive nor expensive. They bought some slippers made by the Tartars of Kazan, of gold and silk and silver thread, beautifully worked, and some ornaments of silver and steel made by the same people, and wooden bowls and spoons used by the peasants, as well as their leather purses and cotton sashes of many colours, and winter boots of white felt, and the head-dresses worn by the women, and a hat such as is worn by ishvoshtsticks, and many other things, all helping to illustrate the customs of the people. Among them was a samovar or tea-urn. It is in shape like an ancient urn. In the centre is a cylinder with a grating at the bottom. The water is held in the space between the cylinder and the sides of the urn. It is filled with water, and then a small piece of ignited charcoal is dropped into the cylinder, which is filled with black charcoal. A chimney is then placed above the charcoal, which now ignites and boils the water. By adding fresh charcoal and more water, a supply can be kept up for hours together. A frame fits on above the chimney, on which the teapot can be placed, to keep it warm, while a lid, called a damper, is used to put out the fire.

These samovars are used on all occasions, and are especially valued by the peasants at their picnics or open-air tea-parties, of which they are very fond. They purchased also several prints of the city, and some very amusing ones descriptive of the battles between the Russians and the Allies, or the Turks or Circassians, by which it appeared that the accounts received by the rest of the world must be totally incorrect, as in all instances, at the Alma, Inkermann, in the Caucasus, the Muscovites were signally victorious, their enemy flying like chaff before them.

The Chinese City, or Kitai Gorod, to the east of the Kremlin, was one of their favourite resorts. The name is most appropriate; and certainly it is most unlike any place in Europe. It is enclosed on three sides by a thick buttressed and round-towered wall, the upper part of which projects considerably; and altogether, from its strange style of architecture, it looks as if it had been imported bodily from some city of the Celestial Empire. The fourth side is formed by the east walls of the Kremlin, of which the Kitai Gorod appears to have been an outwork. The interior contains two long streets, and several smaller ones, besides the truly Oriental bazaar, already spoken of, with its numerous narrow lanes, running under one vast roof, dirty and mean, and crowded with shops of every possible description. Tea-sellers, with their Chinese signboards; paper-sellers, ironmongers, and perfumery and spices, silks and cottons, and shoes and hats, and trunk-makers and workers in leather,—indeed it is useless to enumerate all the trades there carried on. There is generally a row or half a row of the stalls of each trade together. As visitors pass along, the long-coated dealers rush eagerly forward, and with bows and grimaces endeavour to induce them to become customers. Here also the dealers in the holy pictures, or images, as they are called, are to be found. These pictures have the faces and hands only shown, the rest being covered with a casing of gold or silver. They are of all sizes, from two feet to one or two inches square; but as even for the smallest our friends were asked four roubles, they declined buying any of them. Here, also, are sold cups and censers, and all sorts of utensils used in churches. The travellers, however, were little disposed to become purchasers.

Near the bazaar stood, ready to start, three or four diligences—huge black machines, having a vast boot behind, a roomy inside, and a large, comfortable-lookingcoupé. They were bound for Nishni-Novogorood, where a large fair was taking place. Several rough-looking carts followed them, piled up with goods for the same destination. The fair of Nishni is the largest in Russia, perhaps in the world, at the present day. Here the merchants from the west meet the traders and producers from the numerous countries bordering Russia on the east, as well as from all the Russian provinces, and exchange their various commodities. Here transactions are arranged not only for the present, but for the following year, and many a farmer undertakes to deliver timber, and flax, and hemp still growing thousands of miles away, or hides and wool yet adhering to the backs of his cattle or sheep on the far-off prairies, or thousands of sacks of wheat yet ungrown, at Saint Petersburg, Riga, or Odessa, with every certainty of being able to fulfil his contract. Our friends were so interested with the account they heard of Nishni that they were eager to visit it. Russian carts are curious vehicles, made without a particle of iron. The wheels are kept on by various contrivances; some have bits of wood from the projecting edge of the side, into which the ends of the axles fit; others have bows of wood from the perch, which fit on over the axle where the linch-pin should be. The carts used for conveying passengers are covered with an awning of black canvas, and look as if they were water-tight, with a fair possibility of being made comfortable.

The travellers had many other things to see, both in and about Moscow, but they resolved not to delay longer than necessary, as they were anxious to study more of the manners and customs of the people in the interior; and they therefore made preparations for their further progress into the country.

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