giant statues in bronze;
and crowning all rises the vast central dome, flanked by its four
smaller domes, all heavily plated with gold.

The church within is one gorgeous mass of precious marbles and mosaics
and silver and gold and jewels. On the tabernacle of the altar, in
gold and malachite, on the screen of the altar, with its pilasters of
_lapis-lazuli_ and its range of malachite columns fifty feet high, were
lavished millions on millions. Bulging from the ceilings are massy
bosses of Siberian porphyry and jasper. To decorate the walls with
unfading pictures, Nicholas founded an establishment for mosaic work,
where sixty pictures were commanded, each demanding, after all artistic
labor, the mechanical labor of two men for four years.

Yet this vast work is not so striking a monument of Nicholas's luxury as
of his timidity.

For this cathedral and some others almost as grand were, in part, at
least, results of the deep wish of Nicholas to wean his people from
their semi-idolatrous love for dark, confined, filthy sanctuaries, like
those of Moscow; but here, again, is a timid purpose and half-result;
Nicholas dared set no adequate enginery working at the popular religious
training or moral training. There had been such an organization,--the
Russian Bible Society,--favored by the first Alexander; but Nicholas
swept it away at one pen-stroke. Evidently, he feared lest Scriptural
denunciations of certain sins in ancient politics might be popularly
interpreted against certain sins in modern politics.

It was this same vague fear at revolutionary remembrance which thwarted
Nicholas in all his battling against official corruption.

The corruption-system in Russia is old, organized, and respectable.
Stories told of Russian bribes and thefts exceed belief only until one
has been on the ground.

Nicholas began well. He made an Imperial progress to Odessa,--was
welcomed in the morning by the Governor in full pomp and robes and
flow of smooth words; and at noon the same Governor was working in the
streets, with ball and chain, as a convict.

But against such a chronic moral evil no government is so weak as your
so-called "_strong_" government. Nicholas set out one day for the
Cronstadt arsenals, to look into the accounts there; but before he
reached them, stores, storehouses, and account-books were in ashes.

So, at last, Nicholas folded his arms and wrestled no more. For, apart
from the trouble, there came ever in his d