n, while
Moscow is Tartar in its very atmosphere. The first is the visible
growth of modern ideas; the last is the symbol of the past.

Though Moscow has been three times nearly destroyed,--first, by the
Tartars in the fourteenth century; second, by the Poles in the
seventeenth century; and again, at the time of the French invasion
under Napoleon, in 1812,--still it has sprung from its ashes each
time as if by magic power, and has never lost its original character,
being a more splendid and prosperous capital than ever before since
its foundation, and is to-day rapidly increasing in the number of its
population. The romantic character of its history, so mingled with
protracted wars, civil conflicts, sieges, and conflagrations, makes
it seem like a fabulous city. The aggregate of the population is not
much if any less than that of St. Petersburg, while the territory
which it covers will measure over twenty miles in circumference. "In
spite of all the ravages and vicissitudes through which Moscow has
passed in the thousand years of its existence," said a resident to
us, "probably no city in the world is less changed from its earliest
years." Descriptions of the place written by travellers nearly three
centuries since might pass for a correct exhibit of the ancient
capital to-day. The impress of the long Tartar occupation in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries still remains both in the
architecture and the manners and customs of the people, while much
of its original barbaric splendor permeates everything. At
St. Petersburg the overpowering influence of European civilization
is keenly felt; here, that of Oriental mysticism still prevails.

The city is unique taken as a whole. One seems to breathe in a
semi-Asiatic barbarism while strolling through its quaint streets and
antiquated quarters. There are no avenues long enough to form a
perspective, the streets winding like a river through a broad meadow,
but undulating so as occasionally to give one a bird's-eye view of
the neighborhood. Still there are modern sections which might be
taken out of Vienna, London, Dresden, or Paris, for one finds
characteristics of them all combined mingled with the gilded domes of
an Indian city, and the graceful minarets of Egypt. A certain modern
varnish is now and then observable. Gas has been introduced, and
tramways are laid in some of the principal thoroughfares. Like the
Manzanares at Madrid or the Arno at Florence, the Moskva is n