CHAPTER XCIV. Mr. Palmer leaves Petersburg for Moscow. MAY Moscow, AY 21 [N.S.].-Left Petersburg for where I arrived on the 24th [N.S.]. journey of 5251 English miles; I went by diligence. The first day we dined at Tosna, a place fifty-eight versts from Petersburg, arriving there about four o'clock. I observed my companion in the coupé asked for meatsoup and meat at table, though it was Friday, without scruple, and the people of the hotel had no fast dinner to give. However, on the appearance of a thunderstorm he crossed himself three times. There is little to notice on the journey, except the long black-looking villages, which lie along the road at intervals. The houses are made of trunks of trees, roughly squared, and let into each other; plastered within, but not without. The gable of the house 1 Towards 700 versts, a verst being a little short of threequarters of an English mile, according to Pinkerton; but Murray says two-thirds, which will make the distance 780 versts. almost always fronts the road, and the roof, which is of boards and very high, projects some way over the walls, affording a shelter from rain or sun in summer, and shooting off the snow in winter. These houses by no means betoken poverty; on the contrary, they are more substantial, warmer, and larger than any houses of our peasantry in England. Indeed, that sort of poverty which abounds with us cannot be said to exist in Russia. The peasants, whom we suppose to be wretched slaves, answer rather to our small farmers or copyhold tenants, than to day-labourers or paupers. They have all from sixteen to twenty acres of land, with horse and cart, sheep and other live stock, with a long range of outhouses running back behind each cottage for hay, wood, and the lodging of cattle in winter. This they hold, free of other rent, by a service of three days' labour in the week to the lord— a service which is often commuted for an annual money payment. The ends of the houses toward the road are a good deal ornamented, and with their high roofs look not only picturesque but pretty, often having as many as three galleries or balconies of palings across, besides an ornamental board or bar just under the angle of the roof. The woodwork of these palings as well as the projecting edges of the roof and the shutters of the windows which fold back without, is often much indented and cut, so as almost to resemble E e a lace pattern. On the other hand, the extent of the outhouses behind, often very roughly put together, and of dead paling between every two houses, all black like the houses themselves from the weather, certainly presents rather a. gloomy and squalid aspect, and contrasts strangely with the bright, clean, white-washed walls and green cupolas, domes, and roofs of the church or churches, and with the red-brick and whitewash of the Government Offices, and perhaps of the hotel. The road from Petersburg to Moscow is magnificent in its width and keeping, and in the granite bridges which one passes at different places; but of scattered houses or cross-roads we see absolutely none, except here and there perhaps a mere cart-rut near a village. Our way ran through two uniform lines of forest of birch and pine, through which a wide space has been cut and left bare. This at the time looked wild enough, but on my return from Moscow it was one vast carpet of flowers of the brightest colours. Early on Saturday, the 22nd, in the grey of the morning, we saw several monasteries along the river Volchoff before we entered Novgorod, in which there are still many churches, though it is no longer populous. The Cathedral of St. Sophia, of which we just caught a glimpse, is the oldest building of the kind yet remaining in a perfect state, and so one of the greatest architectural curiosities in Russia. As we left the city, we saw again several more monasteries in the distance along the banks of the river, and of the lake Ilmen. From Novgorod there was in the diligence a lad of about thirteen or fourteen years of age, who was returning to the Gymnasium at Moscow. He gave of his provisions to almost every beggar, choosing out the most proper object when there were several, with great care. He also took off his cap and crossed himself thrice whenever we came in sight of a church; whenever it thundered and lightened; and when we first came in sight of the churches of any town or city where there were many. CHAPTER XCV. Grand Duke Alexander and his Bride, and the Townspeople and Villagers. HE Grand Duke Alexander, the heir-apparent, THE and his bride were travelling to Moscow at the same time with our diligence, and were to join the Emperor at the Peterskoi Palace in the environs, whither he had preceded them a few days before. As they stayed for the night at Novgorod and again at Tver, they passed and repassed us upon the road more than once. The Valdai hills which were passed between Saturday evening and Sunday morning were inconsiderable, but still rising gradually, form some of the highest ground in Russia; rivers, flowing in all directions and to the extremities of the empire, take their rise among them. Vishny Volochok, from the glimpse we had of it about eight o'clock in the morning, seemed to be rising into an important town by help of its canal, a canal which now unites the Baltic with the Caspian. One sign of this, the sprinkling of brick and plaster, red, white, green, and yellow, with |