I came down from the Kremlin to my lodgings at Billot’s, and, wearied with the wanderings of the day, have been lying on the bed and looking out on the city. It is just before sunset, and the day has been oppressively warm. A delicious glow from the gorgeous west is bathing all the domes and roofs with splendid colors, and silence is stealing in with the setting sun upon the crowded town. It is the eve of one of their most holy festivals of the church. One vast church edifice is directly in view of my window and but a short way off. As I lie musing, from this church comes the softest, sweetest tone of an evening bell. Another tone responds. A third is heard. The Ivan Tower on the height of the Kremlin utters his tremendous voice, like the voice of many waters. And all the churches and towers over the whole city, four hundred bells and more, in concert, in harmony, “with notes almost divine,” lift up their voices in an anthem of praise, such as I never thought to hear with mortal ears: waves of melody, an ocean of music, deep, rolling, heaving, changing, swelling, sinking, rising, overwhelming, exalting. I had heard the great organs of Europe, but they were tame and trifling compared with this. The anthem of Nature at Niagara is one great monotone. The music of Moscow’s bells is above and beyond them all. It is the voice of the people. It utters the emotions of millions of loving, beating, longing hearts, not enlightened, perhaps, like yours, but all crying out to the great Father, in these solemn and inspiring tones, as if these tongues had voices to cry: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, heaven and earth are full of thy glory.” CHAPTER XXVIII. THE CHURCHES OF MOSCOW. WE were alone in the holiest of all the holy places in the empire of Russia: a church and a sepulchre; the place where the emperors crown themselves and the primates of the church are lying in their grave-clothes all around; the grandest of all earthly grandeur, and the solemn evidences of the mightier power of King Death staring at the pageant in mockery of all that man is and does.