be seen a few times before marriage by his female relatives, and
on these occasions all kinds of tricks were played. A stool was
placed under her feet that she might seem taller, or a handsome
female attendant, or a better-looking sister were substituted.
"Nowhere," says Kotoshikhin, "is there such trickery practised
with reference to the brides as at Moscow." The innovations of
Peter the Great broke through the oriental seclusion of the terem,
as the women's apartments were called. During the minority of Ivan
IV. the regency was committed to the care of his mother Elena, and
was at best but a stormy period. When I van came to the throne the
country was not even yet free from the incursions of the Tartars.
In Hakluyt's voyages we have a curious account of one of these
devastations in a "letter of Richard Vscombe to M. Henrie Lane,
touching the burning of the city of Mosco by the Crimme Tartar,
written the fifth day of August, 1571." "The Mosco is burnt every
sticke by the Crimme, the 24th day of May last, and an innumerable
number of people; and in the English house was smothered Thomas
Southam, Tosild, Waverley, Green's wife and children, two children
of Rafe, and more to the number of twenty-five persons were stifled
in oure beere seller, and yet in the same seller was Rafe, his
wife, John Browne, and John Clarke preserved, which was wonderful.
And there went to that seller Master Glover and Master Rowley also;
but because the heat was so great they came foorth againe with much
perill, so that a boy at their heeles was taken with the fire,
yet they escaped blindfold into another seller, and there as God's
will was they were preserved. The emperor fled out of the field,
and many of his people were carried away by the Crimme Tartar.
And so with exceeding much spoile and infinite prisoners, they
returned home againe. What with the Crimme on the one side and
his cruelties on the other, he hath but few people left" (Hakluyt,
I. 402).

[Illustration: ROOM OF THE TSAR MICHAILOWITCH, MOSCOW.]

It is well known that the English first became acquainted with
Russia in the time of Ivan the Terrible. In the reign of Edward VI.
a voyage was undertaken by Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor,
who attempted to reach Russia by way of the North Sea. Willoughby
and his crew were unfortunately lost, but Chancellor succeeded in
reaching Moscow, and showing his letters to the Tsar, in reply to
which an alliance was concluded and