and was so named because it was raised from the ground on supports resembling stilts.  “St. Nicholas of the Interpreters” is in the quarter where the Court interpreters lived, and where the Tatar mosque now stands.  Then we have:  “The Life-Giving Trinity in the Mud,” “St. John the Warrior” and “St. John the Theologian in the Armory,” “The Birth of Christ on Broadswords,” “St. George the Martyr in the Old Jails,” “The Nine Holy Martyrs on Cabbage-Stalks,” on the site of a former market garden, and the inexplicable “Church of the Resurrection on the Marmot,” besides many others, some of which, I was told, bear quite unrepeatable names, probably perverted, like the last and like “St. Nicholas Louse’s Misery,” from words having originally some slight resemblance in sound, but which are now unrecognizable.

Great stress is laid, in hasty books of travel, on the contrasts presented by the Moscow streets, the “palace of a prince standing by the side of the squalid log hut of a peasant,” and so forth.  That may, perhaps, have been true of the Moscow of twenty or thirty years ago.  In very few quarters is there even a semblance of truth in that description at the present day.  The clusters of Irish hovels in upper New York among the towering new buildings are much more picturesque and noticeable.  The most characteristic part of the town, as to domestic architecture, the part to which the old statements are most applicable, lies between the two lines of boulevards, which are, in themselves, good places to study some Russian tastes.  For example, a line of open horse-cars is run all winter on the outer boulevard, and appreciated.  Another line has the centre of its cars inclosed, and uninclosed seats at the ends.  The latter are the most popular, at the same price, and as for heating a street-car, the idea could never be got into a Russian brain.  A certain section of the inner boulevard, which forms a sort of slightly elevated garden, is not only a favorite resort in summer, but is thronged every winter afternoon with people promenading or sitting under the snow-powdered trees in an arctic fairyland, while the mercury in the thermometer is at a very low ebb indeed.  It is fashionable in Russia to grumble at the cold, but unfashionable to convert the grumbling into action.  On the contrary, they really enjoy sitting for five hours at a stretch, in a temperature of 25 degrees below zero, to watch the fascinating horse races on the ice.

In the districts between the boulevards, one can get an idea of the town as it used to be.  In this “Earth Town” typical streets are still to be found, but the chances are greatly against a traveler finding them.  They are alleys in width and irregularity, paved with cobblestones which seem to have been selected for their angles, and with intermittent sidewalks consisting of narrow, carelessly joined flagstones.  The front steps of the more pretentious houses must be skirted or mounted, the street must