before the pasteboard cottages on the stage.

People in Moscow were looking forward with eager expectation to the
event of the coronation, and it was supposed that half the great people
of Europe would be there. It did not appear, however, that the
inhabitants were so anxious to see them for their own sakes as they were
to let their houses and lodgings and rooms at hotels at exorbitantly
high prices, every one expecting to reap a fine harvest out of the
pockets of the gaping foreigners.

The most curious church, perhaps, in the world--the most outrageously
strange of all the bizarre churches of Moscow--is the Cathedral of Saint
Basil, which stands close to the river, at the north end of a broad,
open space outside the walls of the Kremlin, and which space is bounded
on the other side by the Bazaar. It is in the most _outre_ style of
Byzantine architecture. There is a large tower somewhere about the
centre, running up into a spire, and eight other towers round it, with
cupolas on their summits. There is also a ninth tower, which looks like
an excrescence, in the rear. Each of these cupolas and towers is
painted in a different way, and of different colours; some are in
stripes, others in a diamond-shaped pattern, others of a corkscrew
pattern, and some have excrescences like horse-chestnuts covering them.
Then there are galleries and steps, and ins and outs of all sorts,
painted with circles, and arches, and stripes of every possible colour.

"Well, that is a funny church!" exclaimed Harry, as Fred ran off to find
the keepers to show them the entrance.

"An odd epithet to bestow on a church," observed Cousin Giles; "but I
cannot find a better."

Underneath the building there is a chapel, which has no connection with
the upper portion. A flight of steps led them into the building. Each
of the nine domes and the pinnacle covers a separate chapel, which is
again divided by a screen into two parts--one for the priests, the other
for the worshippers. From each of the domes above, a gigantic face of
the Virgin, or of some saint, looks down on those below. The huge,
calm-eyed faces gazing from so great a height have a very curious
effect. In the interior of the pinnacle a dove is seen floating, as it
were, in the air. Every portion of the interior walls of this strange
edifice is covered with the same sort of richly and many-coloured
arabesque designs seen in the old palace, while a sort of gallery runs
round t