seeker, was all that disturbed the silence. I
walked some distance in the direction of the Kremlin. The air was
deliciously cool and refreshing, and the sky wore a still richer glow
than I had noticed a few hours before at the gardens of the Peterskoi.
The moon had not yet gone down, but the first glowing blushes of the
early morning were stealing over the heavens, mingled with its silvery
light. I took off my hat to enjoy the fresh air, and wandered along
quite enchanted with the richness and variety of the scene. Every turn
of the silent streets brought me in view of some gilded pile of
cupolas, standing in glowing relief against the sky. Churches of
strange Asiatic form, the domes richly and fancifully colored; golden
stars glittering upon a groundwork of blue, green, or yellow; shrines
with burning tapers over the massive doors and gateways, were
scattered in every direction in the most beautiful profusion.
Sometimes I saw a solitary beggar kneeling devoutly before some gilded
saint, and mourning over the weariness of life. Once I was startled
by the apparition of a poor wretch lying asleep--I thought he was
dead--a crippled wreck upon the stone steps--his eyes closed in brief
oblivion of the world and its sorrows, his furrowed and pallid
features a ghastly commentary upon the glittering temples and idols
that surround him. For above all these things that are "decked with
silver and with gold, and fastened with nails and with hammers that
they move not," there is One who hath "made the earth by His power and
established the world by His wisdom;" man is but brutish in his
knowledge; "every founder is confounded by the graven image; for his
molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them." Such
extremes every where abound in Moscow--magnificence and filth; wealth
and poverty; a superstitious belief in the power of images in the
midst of abject proofs of their impotence. And yet, is it not better
that men should believe in something rather than in nothing? The
glittering idol can not touch the crippled beggar and put health and
strength in his limbs, but if the poor sufferer can sleep better upon
the cold stones in the presence of his patron saint than elsewhere, in
charity's name let him,

"O'erlabored with his being's strife
Shrink to that sweet forgetfulness of life."

I wandered on. Soon the cupolas of the mighty Kremlin were in sight,
all aglow with the bright sheen of the morn. Passing alo