been examined, and, in the very centre of the Kremlin, between the Tsar Pushka and the Chudov Monastery, but three feet beneath the pavement, is the basement of an old edifice, vaults of white stone, probably the remains of the palace of the Tsar Boris Godunov. The smaller palace is built upon the side of an early cemetery; at one time in the open space near Ivan Veliki criminals were publicly executed and the _ukases_ of the Tsar proclaimed. In the same way that the Kremlin is honeycombed with vaults for the storage of great quantities of food and munitions of war, it is penetrated by different conduits for the water drawn from the bed of the neighbouring stream; a supply so plentiful and constant that the Tsar Alexis used it to flow through great lead bottomed tanks and ornamental lakes, whereon, like later Tsars, he amused himself with a toy fleet. The railed in Sobornia Ploshchad has been from time immemorial the Grand enclosure. Here the religious processions formed, and form; here Dmitri Ivanovich unfurled the black standard before going out to give battle to Mamai; here most Tsars have passed to their coronation, or have walked with their brides to the altar for the wedding sacrament; across it the princes and Tsars of Moscow have been carried to their last resting place. Outside that door crouched the excommunicated Ivan Groznoi, from this the frenzied people dragged their priest, towards that the threatened metropolitan bravely made his way to officiate at a forbidden mass. Before the Grand entrance (Krasnoe Kriltso) foreign ambassadors drew up in pomp to make their calls of state, on that same terrace Ivan with his staff transfixed the foot of the brave messenger of the not less bold Kourbski, there, too, he gazed at the comet supposed to foretell his death. To this place the basket for the petitions of the people was daily lowered from the Tsar's palace window; on this spot fell the body of the murdered false Dmitri. Here at different times have gathered Tartar envoys, merchant venturers, turbulent Streltsi; the famished, the terrified and the pestilent stricken; Polish soldiers, French grenadiers, foreign fightingmen as a bodyguard, the dreaded "opritchniki"; bountiful boyards, Napoleon's riff-raff; humble Russians to petition, pious ones to pray, grateful ones to return thanks. The imaginative visitor may conjure up amidst the buildings whatever scene he will from the history of Moscow and find adequate setting. May picture state pageantry; church ceremonial; military display; the expression of perfervid piety; the ruin following fearful disaster--whether wrought by the hand of man or the act of God. Such scenes that the walls will seem to echo in turn the laughter of homely merry-making, the huzzahs of victory, the wails of the afflicted, the uproar of the turbulent, the sighs of the worshipper--for here every emotion has been many times expressed by the varying multitudes that have thronged these courts.