Moscowites; there are some good shops, nearly all French or Italian, yet everything bears the stamp of a _second_ capital. The faces we meet are quite in a different style from those we saw in St. Petersburg: some of them are extremely pretty, and others very much the contrary. I believe it was in Moscow that I saw the most frightful countenance I ever beheld. There are not many pedestrians: the Moscow people are too Asiatic to be fond of exercise. The carriages that pass contain numerous portly old ladies and gentlemen, some of them with very Tartar-like faces, and looking solemn and grave. A few minutes’ walk, and we are at the far-famed Kremlin itself. Its massive walls, and curious towers tapering to the sky, with small loopholes and windows, the terrace of earth on which it is built, may all recall to our mind the time when it formed the stronghold of Muscovy, when men fought with bows and arrows, and the besiegers were repulsed from lofty battlements. The general appearance almost reminds us of the pictures of the old palaces of Hindûstan, so perfectly oriental does it seem. What a number of churches crowded together! What a variety of domes, cupolas, and crosses, all glittering in the sun! That long, narrow garden, which forms a walk under the walls, was formerly the moat which rendered the Kremlin a more secure abode for the Czar, for here is still the ancient palace of the Muscovite monarchs. That huge white building yonder, audaciously lifting its staring front over the walls, is the new imperial residence, which joins on to the old one. It certainly spoils the picturesque _ensemble_ of the Kremlin, and looks infinitely more like a range of barracks than aught else. Crossing the sloping way over the Alexander Gardens, we perceive that the wall encloses within its precincts not only innumerable churches and convents, but an arsenal and casernes, before which are displayed, in a very prominent manner, several handsome guns, a part of the spoils of the _grande armée_, as they say. As we proceed we see a variety of curious old churches, each more quaint and interesting than the last; and now we have a good view of Ivan Veliki (or the Cathedral of John the Great), the pride of the Moscowites, in front of which is the celebrated great bell of which everybody has heard or read. Several monks sweep past us in their long black gowns, and innumerable military men saunter about, making a fitting group in the foreground. If we stand and look over this wall on the side of the walk, we shall have a view that is worth coming a thousand versts to see. Below us lies the city; what a gay-looking place! The gilt domes and golden crosses, the star-bespangled cupolas, the belfries with their lofty spires, the palace-like buildings, the gardens, the gaily-painted roofs, the very irregularity of the streets, lend an additional beauty; the hills on which the city is built, rising from the Moskwa’s banks, succeed each other until lost in the distance.