en Europeanised--in
all except the paving, which is everywhere execrably Asiatic--to suit
the tastes of those who have adopted European culture, but the great
majority of them still retain much of their ancient character and
primitive irregularity. As soon as we diverge from the principal
thoroughfares, we find one-storied houses--some of them still of
wood--which appear to have been transported bodily from the country,
with courtyard, garden, stables, and other appurtenances. The whole is
no doubt a little compressed, for land has here a certain value, but the
character is in no way changed, and we have some difficulty in believing
that we are not in the suburbs but near the centre of a great
town. There is nothing that can by any possibility be called street
architecture. Though there is unmistakable evidence of the streets
having been laid out according to a preconceived plan, many of them show
clearly that in their infancy they had a wayward will of their own, and
bent to the right or left without any topographical justification. The
houses, too, display considerable individuality of character, having
evidently during the course of their construction paid no attention to
their neighbours. Hence we find no regularly built terraces, crescents,
or squares. There is, it is true, a double circle of boulevards, but the
houses which flank them have none of that regularity which we commonly
associate with the term. Dilapidated buildings which in West-European
cities would hide themselves in some narrow lane or back slum here
stand composedly in the face of day by the side of a palatial residence,
without having the least consciousness of the incongruity of their
position, just as the unsophisticated muzhik, in his unsavoury
sheepskin, can stand in the midst of a crowd of well-dressed people
without feeling at all awkward or uncomfortable.

All this incongruity, however, is speedily disappearing. Moscow has
become the centre of a great network of railways, and the commercial
and industrial capital of the Empire. Already her rapidly increasing
population has nearly reached a million.* The value of land and property
is being doubled and trebled, and building speculations, with the aid of
credit institutions of various kinds, are being carried on with feverish
rapidity. Well may the men of the old school complain that the world is
turned upside down, and regret the old times of traditional somnolence
and comfortable routine! Th