es and sizes and colours, and towers, and convents, and
palaces. One palace, however, surpasses them all in beauty and size,
though its shining white walls and richly-carved facade and general
bran-new appearance look sadly out of place among all the venerable,
grotesque, many-coloured, odd-shaped, Byzantine edifices which are
dotted about in its neighbourhood. It looks like some huge intruder
into the place, which all the old inhabitants are collecting to put
forth again; or like an emu in a poultry-yard, at which all the
parti-coloured cocks and hens and ducks are crowing, and cackling, and
quacking, in a vain endeavour to frighten him out. It required more
than one visit to the spot before our friends could learn the geography
of the place, and distinguish the numerous churches of all sizes, and
heights, and shapes, and varieties of outside and inside adornment. The
chief, called the Cathedral, has its walls painted with subjects taken
from Scripture, which to the purer taste of Protestants appear shocking
and blasphemous. However, our travellers did not then attend to the
details of the strange occupants of the Kremlin. Their object was to
obtain a comprehensive view of the city from the summit of that gaunt
old monster, the Tower of Ivan Veleki. They first, however, examined
the huge bell which stands on a pedestal at its foot. This bell was
once suspended on the top of a tower, which was burnt, and the bell in
its fall had a little piece broken out of it. When they got up to it,
they found that this little piece was far too heavy for any ten men to
lift, and that the gap it left was big enough for a man to walk through.

The door of the old tower was open, and they mounted a well-conditioned
flight of circular steps towards the summit. Having climbed to the top
of the first flight, they passed through a door into another tower,
where there hung a peal of huge bells,--one more vast than the rest,
which, on being struck, gave forth a wondrously musical sound.

"I should not like to be near that fellow while he was ringing," cried
Harry; "he would make noise enough to deafen a rhinoceros."

They did not stop to hear those famous bells, but climbed on till they
stood high above all the surrounding edifices. As they gazed forth from
the narrow stone balcony which ran round the dome, they beheld rising on
every side a sea of spires, domes, cupolas, minarets, towers, and roofs
of every conceivable colour, sha