ng its
embattled walls, which now seemed of snowy whiteness, I reached the
grand plaza of the Krasnoi Ploschod. Standing out in the open space, I
gazed at the wondrous pile of gold-covered domes till my eyes rested
on the highest point--the majestic tower of Ivan Veliki. And then I
could but think of the terrible Czar--the fourth of the fierce race of
Ivans, who ruled the destinies of Russia; he who killed his own son in
a fit of rage, yet never shook hands with a foreign embassador without
washing his own immediately after; the patron of monasteries, and the
conqueror of Kazan, Astrakan, and Siberia. This was the most cruel yet
most enlightened of his name. I am not sure whether the tower was
built to commemorate his fame or that of his grandfather, Ivan the
Third, also called "the Terrible," of whom Karasmin says that, "when
excited with anger, his glance would make a timid woman swoon; that
petitioners dreaded to approach his throne, and that even at his table
the boyars, his grandees, trembled before him." A terrible fellow, no
doubt, and thoroughly Russian by the testimony of this Russian
historian, for where else will you find men so terrible as to make
timid women swoon by a single glance of their eye? Not in California,
surely! If I were a Czar this soft summer night (such was the idea
that naturally occurred to me), I would gaze upon the fair flowers of
creation with an entirely different expression of countenance. They
should neither wilt nor swoon unless overcome by the delicacy and
tenderness of my admiration.

From the green towers of the Holy Gate, where neither Czar nor serf
can enter without uncovering his head, I turned toward the Vassoli
Blagennoi--the wondrous maze of churches that gathers around the
Cathedral of St. Basil. Not in all Moscow is there a sight so strange
and gorgeous as this. The globular domes, all striped with the varied
colors of the rainbow; the glittering gold-gilt cupolas; the rare and
fanciful minarets; the shrines, and crosses, and stars; the massive
steps; the iron railing, with shining gold-capped points--surely, in
the combination of striking and picturesque forms and colors, lights
and shades, must ever remain unequaled. The comparison may seem
frivolous, yet it resembled more, to my eye, some gigantic cactus of
the tropics, with its needles and rich colors, its round, prickly
domes and fantastic cupolas, than any thing I had ever seen before in
the shape of a church or gro