vision of the prophet Jonah, in a dream, who had told him it was his duty to resume his seat on the patriarchal throne of Moscow. But the Czar could not see it. Jonah said nothing to him about it, and he had an idea that unhappy Nicon might, indeed, have had a great many dreams of the same kind, but that Jonah was not the man to make patriarchs for him. He called a council of Eastern patriarchs, presided in the midst of it himself, and this council came very naturally to the decision that Nicon should be degraded and banished to a monastery in Novgorod. The next Czar who came to the throne pardoned Nicon, who soon after died. Such was the sad career of a great genius, whose brief reign was signalized by the aggrandizement of the Russian Church, for he magnified five patriarchates,—Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Moscow. And now his remains are lying in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which he built, in the chapel of Melchisedek, at the foot of the Golgotha, and over his tomb hang the heavy chains which, to mortify his body, he wore around his person, while he put heavier chains on the souls of those whom he reduced beneath his ghostly power. I think there is a lesson in the life and death of such a man, and that we may read in it the workings of human ambition and pride, even under the garments of holy offices; we see the conflict between church and state, whenever they are allied, and the doom that awaits the men who pervert the institutions of religion to their own glory and the oppression of others. We are now approaching Moscow. Two thousand miles by rail we have come. The whole region over which we are now passing seems to be one dead level of lowly toiling, dreary living, without one sign of such enterprising life and energy as we would find in France or England, not to speak of that young world in the West, to which freedom seems to have taken her flight. The train is moving slowly into town. We have come to Moscow. We are at the gates of the Kremlin! CHAPTER XXVII. THE KREMLIN AND THE BELLS OF MOSCOW. M. BILLOT is a Swiss landlord, who keeps a good hotel in Moscow. He has a charming wife and family around him, a well-trained corps of servants, and makes his house a home for American and English guests. It is something for a weary traveller to find a home when he gets to Moscow. I have but one fault to find with Moscow’s bed and board. Mind, it is not a complaint against mine host, M. Billot. It is the fault of the city, that it is full of fleas. We charged upon them with a flea powder, the second night of our sojourn there, but the powder about M. Billot’s pillows was as troublesome as the fleas.