h achieve. For varied beauty and perfect combination of
nature and art, I think the gardens eclipse those of Sans
Souci. At every corner, or end of an avenue or path, where a
piece of statuary could be introduced with effect, there one
was sure to find one, in bronze or in white marble; many of
the latter had a sort of circular niche built behind, with a
blue background to throw the figure into relief. Here we
found a series of shelving ledges made of stone, with a
sheet of water gliding down over them; here a long path,
stretching down slopes and flights of steps, and arched over
all the way with trellises and creepers; here a huge
boulder, hewn, just as it lay, into the shape of a gigantic
head and face, with mild, sphinx-like eyes, as if some
buried Titan were struggling to free himself; here a
fountain, so artfully formed of pipes set in circles, each
set shooting the water higher than those outside, as to form
a solid pyramid of glittering spray; here a lawn, seen
through a break in the woods below us, with threads of
scarlet geraniums running over it, and looking in the
distance like a huge branch of coral; and here and there
long avenues of trees, lying in all directions, sometimes
three or four together side by side, and sometimes radiating
like a star, and stretching away into the distance till the
eye was almost weary of following them. All this will rather
serve to remind me, than to convey any idea, of what we saw.

But the beauties of Peterhof were quite eclipsed by the Oriental
splendours of Moscow, which naturally made a great impression upon a
mind accustomed to the cold sublimity of Gothic architecture at
Oxford.

We gave five or six hours to a stroll through this wonderful
city, a city of white houses and green roofs, of conical
towers that rise one out of another like a foreshortened
telescope; of bulging gilded domes, in which you see, as in
a looking-glass, distorted pictures of the city; of churches
which look, outside, like bunches of variegated cactus (some
branches crowned with green prickly buds, others with blue,
and others with red and white) and which, inside, are hung
all round with _eikons_ and lamps, and lined with
illuminated pictures up to the very roof; and, finally, of
pavement that goes up and down like a ploughed field, and
_drojky_-dri