St Sergius founded the monastery in 1370, but it was not moved to its present site on a hill commanding the Moskva until twenty years later. It educated St Jonah in the fifteenth century, and when he became Metropolitan it increased in importance, but was later surpassed by the Troitsa, and although it owned 12,000 souls--male serfs--in the eighteenth century, it has never attained the leading position, nor even that expected of it. The present walls were built during the reign of Theodore I. but, finished in 1591, they could not keep out the Poles, who completely sacked the monastery in 1612. It is a line, strong looking, dreamy old place, somewhat dilapidated and overgrown with verdure. The wall is half a mile long, commanded by wonderful spire-like towers, some 130 feet high, crowned with two-storeyed domed watch rooms, which look like huge dovecots. There is a covered rampart walk all round, and from the tower near the river, a subterranean passage to the Lizin Prud, a holy well at one time much visited by the sick who had faith in its miraculous healing properties. Some six churches are within its walls, one the Cathedral of the Assumption, a massive building, consecrated in 1405, and having a somewhat bizarre appearance, its façade, in the Byzantine style, being also painted in three colours to represent quadrangular facets. It is a building quite foreign to Muscovite style; reminiscent rather of the old country churches of Portugal. The ikon of greatest celebrity is that of God the Father, richly decorated, and once, it is said, blessed by St Sergius, when it was carried with the troops of Dmitri against the Tartars under Mamai. [Illustration: SIMONOV MONASTYR] A Moscow merchant defrayed the cost of the great belfry, 330 feet high, and under the refectory is buried the renowned Field-Marshall Bruce; the sacristy is rich in vestments and some ornamental work of the Tsar Alexis's _Masterskaya_ in the Kremlin. The most famous inmate was Simeon Bekbulatov the converted Tsar of Kazan, whom Ivan Groznoi made Tsar of Moscow for twelve months; his tomb will be shown. The charm of the Simonov is derived from its stillness, its out of the world air, its roominess, the matured trees, the ample orchard, the long rampart walk, the excellent views of Moscow, the many quaint nooks near the old stores, the grateful shade of pleasant bosquets and the orderly negligence that suggests contentment--an ideal home for dreamers, for cheery mysticism and the inception of unhurried philosophies. THE NOVO SPASSKI