The Grand Duchess Hélène had announced herself at Moscow for Easter. Her niece was allowed to accompany her, and saw Eastern magnificence and architecture for the first time there. On the 4th of May 1864 she writes from Moscow:--“We are in Moscow, that old patriotic town, with its houses of one or two stories, green roofs, and four hundred churches, which are all aglow with the brightest colours. The dimensions of the streets are so enormous that one does not know where the street ends and the open space begins. It is too curious! The town, with its one-storied houses and their surrounding gardens, is quite countrified, almost like a village, and yet it is beautiful. You only see little houses, which are very gay, and still gayer churches. These are bright blue, with light green roofs or domes, or red, green, and blue, all brightly mixed. I think Moscow is only beautiful in bright sunshine, when the hundreds of domes are glistening and throwing their rays on the green roofs. In the Kremlin I saw the treasures of the Church, as also the treasury and armoury in which all the crowns are kept. I am most interested by the antiquity of these things and their historical recollections. There is also kept the enormous silver caldron in which the holy oil is prepared and consecrated. Every three years it is made to simmer for three days and mixed with sweet-scented herbs, whilst prayers are unceasingly offered; then it is consecrated and blessed in the church, and is now called _le saint crême_. Forty to fifty pots are then filled with it. This oil is much prized far and near, as it is used for the consecration of churches, as well as at births and deaths. The many and different ways in which people try to make themselves holy touch me much; and even if we are inclined to ask what is the use of this oil and holy water, we must admit that it displays a childish craving to be purified, and a firm faith in the power of prayer, which can consecrate everything. I find so much cheerfulness and childish faith in the rites of the Greek Church, and less superstition than in the Roman Catholic, but none of the earnestness of ours. It strikes me, too, that our Church in her noblest form--as I speak of the others in their noblest form--is eminently suited to the German character. We have all a tendency to be absorbed in thought, to muse on our own nature, and to seek to attain to a knowledge of God through our own inmost hearts.”