paying your servants? Do you thus make a raree-show of
the palace of your forefathers, and require every man who enters it
for the purpose of enlightening his benighted understanding to pay
your imperial lackeys the sum of three bits? Is it not enough that
your soldiers and retainers should hawk old clothes through the
markets of the Riadi for a decent living, without making a small
speculation out of the beds and wash-stands in which your noble
fathers slept and (possibly) washed their faces?

One of the most remarkable objects of interest within the walls of the
Kremlin is the Tzar Kolokol, or King of Bells, cast in 1730 by order
of the Empress Anne, and said to be not only the largest bell, but the
largest metal casting in existence. This wonderful bell is formed
chiefly of contributions of precious metals, bestowed as religious
offerings by the people from all parts of the Russian empire. Spoons,
plates, coins, and trinkets were thrown by the devout inhabitants into
the melting mass, and thus, each having a share in it, the monarch
bell is regarded with feelings of peculiar affection and veneration
throughout Russia. Writers differ as to its original use and location,
some contending that it was first hung in a tower, which was destroyed
by fire in 1737, and that the large fragment was broken out of it in
the fall, which is now exhibited by the side of the bell; others that
it never was hung at all, but that this fragment resulted from a
failure in the casting. Be that as it may, it was all dug out of the
ground in 1837, and placed in its present position on a pedestal of
granite, close by the tower of Ivan Veliki.

Standing in an open space, where the eye necessarily takes in many
larger objects, including the great tower, but a very inadequate idea
can be formed of the extraordinary dimensions of this bell. Cast in
the usual form, its appearance at the distance of fifty or a hundred
yards is not at all striking; but when you draw near and compare the
height of the groups of figures usually gathered around it with that
of the bell, it is easy to form some conception of its gigantic
proportions. The fragment placed upright against the granite pedestal
looks at a little distance scarcely three feet high, but as you
approach you perceive that it is at least six. The bell itself is
twenty-one feet three inches high, by twenty-two feet five inches in
diameter, and varies from three feet to three inches in thickness.
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