I never had a very definite idea of the KREMLIN of Moscow. It has been mentioned in books about Russia as a part of the city that every one must understand. The Acropolis of Athens and of Corinth, and the Capitoline Hill of Rome, enclosed with a wall to shut them off from the rest of the city, a refuge for the people in time of peril, the site for the most sacred temples and the most gorgeous palace for the sovereign, would be the Kremlin of Athens, or Corinth, or Rome. As far back as in 1340, walls of oak enclosed these heights. A few years afterwards, to resist the Tartars, the wooden walls gave place to stone, but treason gave the fierce barbarian hordes possession of the citadel, and the walls were destroyed. They were built again and again, but in 1485, when it was needful to protect the Kremlin against the attack of artillery, the walls were rebuilt on a scale never before attempted. The solid and lofty stone walls now enclose an area of about a mile and a half in circumference. Five massive gates admit the flow of life to the temples of religion and of justice within this enclosure. The chief entrance is called the “Redeemer” Gate. The passage through the wall by this gate is like going through a railroad tunnel. It is a holy hole, for over it is a picture of the Redeemer of Smolensk, and no one may pass under it without taking off his hat. Formerly, whoever was so hasty or forgetful as to neglect this mark of respect, was punished by being compelled to prostrate himself fifty times before the insulted picture. The Emperor of all the Russias never fails to uncover his head as he enters this gate. Hundreds were going in as I approached: on foot, in droskies, in carriages, but all were mindful of the place, and entered as if they were going into a holy place. Between the Nicholas and Trinity Gates are the arsenal and great cannons, some of them monster guns, quite antiquated by modern progress, but formidable in their proper place; and the long rows that are marked as left behind by the French in their retreat, tell a grim tale of the madness and folly of that disastrous campaign. Through this very Gate Nicholas, the French troops under Napoleon entered the Kremlin. Short as the stay of the Emperor was in the city, it was long enough for him to attempt to blow up the tower over this gate; but a miracle, as the superstitious Russians believe, was wrought to preserve it; for over the gate is a picture of St. Nicholas, “the comfort of suffering humanity,” and when the explosion took place which was to blow this massive structure into ruins, it made a rent indeed, extending upward to the frame of the picture, and there it suddenly stopped, not cracking the glass over the picture, nor the glass lamp hanging before it! And Alexander I. caused an inscription to be put up in memory of the miracle.