Blue heavens, golden cupolas, green towers, red houses, pealing bells above, sleigh-bells on the streets, praying muzhiks before images of the saints, beautiful women in costly furs--when I wish to reconstruct from my recollections the picture of Moscow, these are the elements which at first mingle, charming, chaotic, like the colors in Caucasian gold-enamel. How beautiful a city this! How often have I stood upon the tower of the Ivan Veliky and looked down on this endless sea of shining cupolas and gay roofs crowded upon gently rising hills far into the blue haze of the distance! Never was the Russian love of home so intelligible to me as there in the heart of Russia, upon the battlements of the Kremlin, high above the bank of the Moskva! And involuntarily I wondered, as, indeed, would any one not a subject of the imperator, who has looked down from such battlements upon all the subject masses of Russians, whether he has really subjugated them or whether they have only been brought to a death-bringing hibernation. Æsthetic, ethnological, historical, and political suggestions swarm to the mind of the thoughtful observer in this place. What wonder if the Russian feels himself here on holy ground and would prefer to put off his shoes when he treads it? The tongue of the people has a kindly word for St. Petersburg and a pet name for Moscow--"Little Mother Moscow," it is called, the real capital of Russiandom. And even the stranger must remark this difference of treatment. St. Petersburg astonishes, awes, frightens. Moscow ingratiates herself at first sight and wins each day a firmer hold on our hearts. One thinks with a certain tenderness of one's stay in Moscow, and in spite of unbelief predicts to himself another visit. But not with faith. For unless business calls him there he is not likely to make a second visit to Moscow in a lifetime. But one longs to pass many a pleasant day in this city, so curious and yet so homely, with her kindly inhabitants. Why? It would be hard to say in a few words. The city is in too strong a contrast to the forced founding of St. Petersburg. There the hand of man is all in evidence; nothing is refreshing. A great prison fortress of granite blocks surrounded by huts and barracks. Moscow is a product of nature, founded with enthusiasm by its dwellers in response to the open invitation of nature, and adored even with devotion. Even the stranger feels this, even though there is nothing to which he is unaccustomed except the devotion and tenderness of a people to whom he is bound by not a single tie of common association. With what shudders one wanders through Rome, from Mont Pincio to the Vatican! how one is carried on by the ocean of world history upon the Capitoline, among the excavations of the Forum, among the palace walls of the Palatine! What is to us, in contrast, the Kremlin, this sanctuary of half-Asiatic barbarians? Yes, an exoteric delicacy, nothing else! One cannot free one's self from the charm of