the black wooden houses which still predominated, was sufficiently remarkable. At Torjok, which is celebrated for its manufacture of leather, there is a very respectable inn, and a number of churches, though the town is all of wood. We found the whole population drawn up in front of the hotel, awaiting the arrival of the illustrious travellers; of course they were all in their Sunday dresses; and such dresses as an Englishman was not likely to have before seen.

Some attempt shall be made to describe those of the women. First, shoes of a fanciful shape shining with a good deal of gilding; coloured stockings; a red, blue, yellow or green gown, with a long apron or rather a second gown over it of some equally bright, but different colour. I call it an apron because it seemed to be tied like one by a string round the waist, and to be always open either before or behind though it went all round the body, and reached down to the very broad border (perhaps a foot broad) of the gown. Over or rather above this apron they wore bodices or jackets made very thick, standing off from the body behind, and having capes reaching to the elbows all round of blue, red or yellow or parti-coloured work bordered with gilding. Out from under this bodice or jacket, which seemed made of thick woollen cloth or of cotton-velvet, there appeared puffy white sleeves. On the front of the head and forehead they wore what

looked like crescents of gold or gilding, which gave them the look of having golden foreheads; and over these a silk handkerchief enclosing the hair tightly, and disposed or tied so as to flap in two divisions, something like a hood, upon the shoulders. They have a custom of strapping themselves tightly over the shoulders, which, besides that they are naturally of thick make as well as hard-featured, makes them seem to have very thick double waists, or no waists at all. Many of them had besides exceedingly broad ear-rings in their ears. The common dress of the men and boys was this: first, boots reaching up to the knee, into which were tucked a loose pair of trousers of striped cotton; over that a garment answering to a waistcoat, but more like a shirt without sleeves, of striped cotton of some other colour, blue, or red: then the shube (the sheep-skin coat) or caftan (which is a cassock of blue cloth), with a bright red, blue, or yellow cotton sash round the waist.

At Miaidnöe, the next stage from Torjok, while we were at the inn, a courier in a teleyga, or cart-basket, with three horses abreast, seated or reclining on a bundle of straw, drove up, and announced to the expectant crowd (who were not quite so gay as at Torjok, the place being much smaller), the approach of the Grand Duke's carriage. They immediately began to strike the bells of the church which was just

opposite; the carriage drove up; the Grand Duke and Duchess alighted at the church; and, on leaving it, left alms for the poor, and so drove off again amid the renewed sounding of the bells. At Tver, which is a city of between twenty and thirty thousand souls, and the seat of an archbishop, they were to stay the night. We entered it some time after them, crossing the Volga, which, even there, is a large navigable river, by a bridge of many barges, about half-past ten o'clock at night; and found the whole place brilliantly illuminated. We stopped for tea on Monday morning at Kleen, only eighty-one versts distant from Moscow; and from that stage there was a visible improvement in the appearance of the country: at least, one not unfrequently saw large plots of cultivated land among the waste on either side of the road; also there was comparatively little wood. Still there was nothing to betoken the neighbourhood of a great capital, till we actually reached the barrier, or till we reached the Peterskoi Palace, which is at a short distance out of the city, on the left hand or north side of the road, a huge mass of dark red brick faced with glaring white, and with domes and roofs of a grass-green. We entered Moscow about six o'clock, p.m., and noticed as we entered many scaffoldings, platforms and rows of seats, which had been erected in the vacant spaces on either side of the way for the accommodation of spectators,

who might wish to see the Emperor with his son and his daughter-in-law make their public entry. Some one observed that the clergy would go out with the Cross, in procession, to meet him, and conduct him to the Cathedral of the Assumption, in the Kremlin.

CHAPTER XCVI.

First View of Moscow.

UESDAY morning, May 25 [N.s.].-The morning

TUES

after my arrival I went for the first time down the street called Dmitriefka, to the Kremlin, surveyed its Gothic towers and battlements, which excited my admiration more than any church or other edifice that I had seen, and entered by the northern gate, under the tower of St. Nicholas. This tower the French attempted to blow up, but succeeded only in part; the Icon being unharmed, and the glass which covered it remaining unbroken. Then, walking on to the terrace, on the south, I saw all the view across the river, a vast extent of green and red roofs, of white and yellow houses, with an infinity of pinnacles, bulbs, and domes, intermingled with foliage and gardens, and streaked by the serpentine windings of the river.

In the distance in front, scarcely distinguishable over the trees and houses which intervene, was the Donskoi monastery; and to the right of it the Sparrow hills;