The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

304 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE.nearly 10 miles altogether. Beyond this circular boulevard stretch the suburbs,which arc again surrounded by an enclosure with abrupt projections and pyramidaltowers, and intersected here and there by wide streets, which will one day beprobably connected in a continuous outer boulevard. Moscow covers an area ofover 40 square miles, which, though equal to that of Paris, contains a populationthree or four times inferior to that of the French capital. Many quarters resemblestraggling villages, with their little painted houses grouped irregularly roundsome central church or palace. In the last century the Prince de Ligue describedMoscow as a collection of baronial residences surrounded by their parks and thehovels of their serfs. It even still retains some traces of this peculiar development,gardens, groves, fields, waste spaces dotted with ponds penetrating betweenthe suburbs towards the more densely peopled quarters, while, on the other hand,outlying villages line the highways for more than 6 miles from the heart ofthe city. There is no lack of space to introduce pure air into all the dwellings ;but many of the so-called " half-storied " bouses have their basements below thestreet level, and these are kept always damp by the rains and bad drainage.Hence the mortality is normally higher than the birth rate, and the city wouldsoon be reduced to a mere village, if the population were not recruited by aconstant flow of immigration.But from a distance this hidden squalor is veiled,and the great city appears only in its beauty, nothing being visible except trees,hundreds of towers, over a thousand " bulb-shaped " domes surmounting some 360churches— " forty times forty," says the proverb. Seen from the " Sparrow Hills "Vorobyoui Gori), running west of the capital, Moscow, with its frowning Kremlin,(presents a superb panorama when tinged by the rays of the setting sun.The Kremlin, at once a fortress and an aggregate of cathedrals, convents,palaces, and barracks, is pre-eminently the monument of the Russian Empire.Thence emanated the mandates of the Muscovite Czar, aud here were promulgatedthe decrees of the Church. On entering its hallowed precincts through the"Saviour's Gate" (Spaskiye Vorota), all must devoutly uncover, and a sort ofworship is also paid to the Ivan Velikiy belfry, built in 1600 by Boris Godunov,and rising 266 feet from the centre of the Kremlin. On a pedestal at the foot ofthis tower rests the cracked " queen of bells," weighing 200 tons, and in a neighbouringchurch the Czars are crowned and the Muscovite Metropolitans buried.Another cathedral, no less resplendent in frescoes, mosaics, marbles, and preciousstones, contains the tombs of the first Czars, and in the middle of the palace courtyardis a very ancient little church dedicated to the " Saviour in the Forest," andrecalling a time when the land was still densely wooded. Some of the buildingsattached to the imperial residence are also very remarkable, suggesting in theirstyle the palaces both of Venice and India.One of them contains some valuablecollections, and all present a strange assemblage of domes, turrets, clock towers,colonnades, glittering in gold, yellow, green, and red.The Synodal Palace, nearthe imperial monasteries, contains a library with some unique documents andpriceless manuscripts.The Arsenal also possesses a special museum, besides armsfor 100,000 men, and an enormous but useless cannon, whence Herzen's remark