a break in the woods below us, with threads of scarlet geraniums running over it, and looking in the distance like a huge branch of coral; and here and there long avenues of trees, lying in all directions, sometimes three or four together side by side, and sometimes radiating like a star, and stretching away into the distance till the eye was almost weary of following them.  All this will rather serve to remind me, than to convey any idea, of what we saw.

But the beauties of Peterhof were quite eclipsed by the Oriental splendours of Moscow, which naturally made a great impression upon a mind accustomed to the cold sublimity of Gothic architecture at Oxford.

We gave five or six hours to a stroll through this wonderful city, a city of white houses and green roofs, of conical towers that rise one out of another like a foreshortened telescope; of bulging gilded domes, in which you see, as in a looking-glass, distorted pictures of the city; of churches which look, outside, like bunches of variegated cactus (some branches crowned with green prickly buds, others with blue, and others with red and white) and which, inside, are hung all round with eikons and lamps, and lined with illuminated pictures up to the very roof; and, finally, of pavement that goes up and down like a ploughed field, and drojky-drivers who insist on being paid thirty per cent. extra to-day, “because it is the Empress’s birthday."...

Aug. 5th.—­After dinner we went by arrangement to Mr. Penny, and accompanied him to see a Russian wedding.  It was a most interesting ceremony.  There was a large choir, from the cathedral, who sang a long and beautiful anthem before the service began; and the deacon (from the Church of the Assumption) delivered several recitative portions of the service in the most magnificent bass voice I ever heard, rising gradually (I should say by less than half a note at a time if that is possible), and increasing in volume of sound as he rose in the scale, until his final note rang through the building like a chorus of many voices.  I could not have conceived that one voice could have produced such an effect.  One part of the ceremony, the crowning the married couple, was very nearly grotesque.  Two gorgeous golden crowns were brought in, which the officiating priest first waved before them, and then placed on their heads—­or rather the unhappy bridegroom had to wear his, but the bride, having prudently arranged her hair in a rather complicated manner with a lace veil, could not have hers put on, but had it held above her by a friend.  The bridegroom, in plain evening dress, crowned like a king, holding a candle, and with a face of resigned misery, would have been pitiable if he had not been so ludicrous.  When the people had gone, we were invited by the priests to see the east end of the church, behind the golden gates, and were finally dismissed with a hearty shake of the hand and