reets; many great palaces, dingy with age; and a population
composed chiefly of Russian nabobs and their retinues of serfs. The
reality is almost exactly the reverse of all these preconceived ideas.
The houses for the most part are low--not over one or two stories
high--painted with gay and fanciful colors, chiefly yellow, red, or
blue; the roofs of tin or zinc, and nearly all of a bright green,
giving them a very lively effect in the sun; nothing grand or imposing
about them in detail, and but little pretension to architectural
beauty. Very nearly such houses may be seen every day on any of the
four continents.

Still, every indication of life presents a very different aspect from
any thing in our own country. The people have a slow, slouching,
shabby appearance; and the traveler is forcibly reminded, by the
strange costumes he meets at every turn--the thriftless and degenerate
aspect of the laboring classes--the great lumbering wagons that roll
over the stone-paved streets--the droskies rattling hither and thither
with their grave, priest-like drivers and wild horses--the squads of
filthy soldiers lounging idly at every corner--the markets and
market-places, and all that gives interest to the scene, that he is in
a foreign land--a wild land of fierce battles between the elements,
and fiercer still between men--where civilization is ever struggling
between Oriental barbarism and European profligacy.

The most interesting feature in the population of Moscow is their
constant and extraordinary displays of religious enthusiasm. This
seems to be confined to no class or sect, but is the prevailing
characteristic. No less than three hundred churches are embraced
within the limits of the city. Some writers estimate the number as
high as five hundred; nor does the discrepancy show so much a want of
accuracy as the difficulty of determining precisely what constitutes
a distinct church. Many of these remarkable edifices are built in
clusters, with a variety of domes and cupolas, with different names,
and contain distinct places of worship--as in the Cathedral of St.
Basil, for instance, which is distinguished by a vast number of
variegated domes, and embraces within its limits at least five or six
separate churches, each church being still farther subdivided into
various chapels. Of the extraordinary architectural style of these
edifices, their many-shaped and highly-colored domes, representing all
the lines of the rainbow, th