The Tartar hordes have in ages past been fond of making raids upon Moscow, and leaving her palaces heaps of smoking ruins. In old times the Russians built them of wood for the most part, though one of stone erected in 1484 is still standing. Then the Czars removed the capital to St. Petersburg, and for a long time the Kremlin was without a palace or an emperor. The celebrated Empress Anne gave Moscow a palace, and her presence now and then, and Catharine II. designed a royal residence so vast and gorgeous as to rival the palaces of the world, but it was never finished; its model is preserved as a curiosity in the treasury. What she did build, the French wantonly burned when they were compelled to desert the city which its own inhabitants had consigned to destruction. This house, at the doors of which we have been standing while I have given you these historical facts, is the work of the late Nicholas, and is only about twenty years old. It has no likeness in the various orders of architecture; there is no correspondence or harmony between the within and without of it: yet the whole interior is a blaze of gold and upholstery that leaves all rules of taste and art out of the question. We pass through the Empress’s drawing-room, hung with white silk, her cabinet in crimson, her dressing and bath rooms with malachite mantels and priceless ornaments; the Emperor’s cabinet, with magnificent paintings of the proud French coming into Moscow, and the poor French skulking out,—grim satires these on the horrors and fortunes of war; the state apartments, with huge crystal vases at the entrance; the Hall of St. George, with the names of regiments and soldiers inscribed in gold upon the walls, who have been decorated with this order for bravery on the field; the Hall of St. Andrew, hung with blue silk, and inscribed with the names of heroes; the Emperor’s throne, more ostentatious and imposing than any other in Europe; the audience-chamber and banqueting-room, on which is lavished the last resource of gilt and paint to make a show,—and yet when we are ushered into the Gold Court, all former magnificence is for the moment forgotten in the dazzling splendor that fills the place, as if the walls were blazing with living golden light. A flight of steps at one end of the room, called “the red stair case,” is never trodden upon but when the Emperor, on the greatest of all occasions, goes to the Cathedral of the Assumption. This is part of the old palace begun by Catharine, and has a history running back to the time when John the Terrible stood here and saw the comet that he construed into an omen of his doom. And up this flight of stairs came Napoleon, the greatest of actors, when he took possession of the palace of the Kremlin. And when he went down these stairs he began that descent which never stopped till he touched the bottom of his tomb.