the picture-gallery, with Ivanof’s gigantic picture, in which patriotic Russian critics discover occult merits which place it above anything that Western Europe has yet produced!  Of course I climbed up to the top of the tall belfry which rejoices in the name of “Ivan the Great,” and looked down on the “gilded domes"* of the churches, and bright green roofs of the houses, and far away, beyond these, the gently undulating country with the “Sparrow Hills,” from which Napoleon is said, in cicerone language, to have “gazed upon the doomed city.”  Occasionally I walked about the bazaars in the hope of finding interesting specimens of genuine native art-industry, and was urgently invited to purchase every conceivable article which I did not want.  At midday or in the evening I visited the most noted traktirs, and made the acquaintance of the caviar, sturgeons, sterlets, and other native delicacies for which these institutions are famous—­deafened the while by the deep tones of the colossal barrel-organ, out of all proportion to the size of the room; and in order to see how the common people spent their evenings I looked in at some of the more modest traktirs, and gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, at the enormous quantity of weak tea which the inmates consumed.

     * Allowance must be made here for poetical licence.  In
     reality, very few of the domes are gilt.  The great majority
     of them are painted green, like the roofs of the houses.

Since these first weeks of my sojourn in Moscow more than thirty years have passed, and many of my early impressions have been blurred by time, but one scene remains deeply graven on my memory.  It was Easter Eve, and I had gone with a friend to the Kremlin to witness the customary religious ceremonies.  Though the rain was falling heavily, an immense number of people had assembled in and around the Cathedral of the Assumption.  The crowd was of the most mixed kind.  There stood the patient bearded muzhik in his well-worn sheepskin; the big, burly, self-satisfied merchant in his long black glossy kaftan; the noble with fashionable great-coat and umbrella; thinly clad old women shivering in the cold, and bright-eyed young damsels with their warm cloaks drawn closely round them; old men with long beard, wallet, and pilgrim’s staff; and mischievous urchins with faces for the moment preternaturally demure.  Each right hand, of old and young alike, held a lighted taper, and these myriads of flickering little flames produced a curious illumination, giving to the surrounding buildings a weird picturesqueness which they do not possess in broad daylight.  All stood patiently waiting for the announcement of the glad tidings:  “He is risen!” As midnight approached, the hum of voices gradually ceased, till, as the clock struck twelve, the deep-toned bell on “Ivan the Great” began to toll, and in answer to this signal all the bells in Moscow suddenly sent forth a merry peal.  Each bell—­and