Paradoxical as Moscow is, it is in the highest degree interesting. If no one object can be pointed to as typical of race or period, no public work shown as the result of persistent policy or genius of peculiar citizenship, Moscow in its entirety demonstrates the development of a people. Even the opposing principles of diffusion and cohesion, and the parts they have served in the history of this race, are so unmistakably expressed that the sight-seer, even, feels that in Moscow, most surely, must be found the key not only to the history of Russia, but also to the character of men who have conquered and hold the largest part of two continents. Moscow, the town that has cradled and nursed a mighty nation, does not lack story; but its story comprises much of the early history of the empire subsequently evolved, and consequently much that may be considered foreign to the city itself must be stated if the tale is to be complete, or even comprehensible by those to whom the ancient history of Russia is unknown. * * * * * To begin at the beginning. European Russia is an immense plain, its centre elevated scarcely three hundred feet above sea-level; the hills, few, low and unimportant. Lakes are plentiful, and great rivers with many ramifications flow slowly by tortuous channels--mostly towards the north-west or the south-east. Large tracts of forest and marsh in the centre terminate with frozen wastes to the north, and merge with rough, sandy pastures on the south. At various periods, Europe has been invaded and peopled by different races from the east, and the last of these migrants, the Slavs, for the most part took the direction of the great water-ways of Russia, that is, from the south-east towards the north-west. In addition to their nomadic habit, various causes, amongst which must be counted internecine warfare, led to the dispersion of the Slavs, whilst effective occupation by earlier migrants and the determined resistance of aboriginal races checked their progress in some directions. The Scythian branch of the Slav race settled on the Don about 400 B.C. but was gradually driven from the shores of the Black Sea by the Greek colonists of Miletus. These colonies were taken by the Romans later, and about 300 A.D. the Slavs again asserted their dominion there for a period. Other branches of the Slav race and wilder races from Asia pressed westward, laying the country waste. Huns, Turks, Goths, Bolgars, Magyars, Polovtsi, Pechenegians and others, at different times, drove Slavs of pastoral habit aside from their path. In the fifth century Slavs established themselves on the Dnieper at Kief and at Novgorod on the Ilmen, where they progressed and became civilised. In the seventh century they were once more on the shores of the Black Sea in the south, and in the north Novgorod was a thriving commercial centre.