town hall and the Foreign Archives. In various parts of the town, even on the south side in the Kaloujskaya, will be found modern mansions, that is, erected or rebuilt since the great fire, in the style of the Moscow of the golden age. One of the best is the Dom Chukina near the Tverskaya Triumfalnia--a monument no visitor can escape seeing. But there is no long street without one or more buildings which attract the attention of the stranger by some idiosyncracy of form or colour. No matter in which direction one may go--in the bustling Kitai-Gorod, the quiet and aristocratic Ostogenka, or the bourgeois Zamoskvoretski--soon will be seen some interesting fane reaching above the buildings that flank the street, and a portal distinguished by its cross and ikon indicate the entrance to the sacred enclosure of some monastery, where, amidst leafy foliage and bright verdure, is quiet and seclusion like that of the oasis of the Temple amidst the dreary turmoil of London's vastness. Take that very ordinary street, the Nikitskaya for example; it is wholly common place, wedged in between districts devoted to ordinary commerce, and the chilling respectability of moderate affluence, and leads nowhere in particular. Yet even its name is interesting; did it obtain it from the worthy founder of the Romanof dynasty? or from the religious fanatic who argued points of ritual with Sophia and the Patriarch? or from St Nikita, the saint who shut up Satan in a jar and released him only on stipulated and agreed conditions?