some sense, such scenes are not without an aspect of sadness.
It is melancholy to look upon such a mingling of glitter and
barbarism, wealth and poverty, sincerity, debasement, and crime. No
human being is truly ridiculous, however grotesque may be the
expression of his feelings, when they are the genuine outpouring of a
contrite heart. These nobles, common citizens, and beggars, thus
meeting upon common ground, in a country where the distinctions of
rank are so rigidly observed, and for the time being disregarding all
differences of condition; forgetting their ambitions, their
jealousies, and animosities, and giving themselves up with such
unselfish zeal to all the demands made upon them by their forms of
religion, is, in itself, a touching and impressive sight. I confess
that when the first shock of grotesqueness, so strikingly connected
with all I saw, passed away, the feeling left was one of unutterable
sadness. These people were all fellow-beings, and, right or wrong,
they were profoundly in earnest; yet, while thinking thus, I could not
but fancy the same divine strain of warning that was wafted to the
house of Israel still lingered in the air: "Every man is 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; they
are vanity and the work of errors; in the time of their visitation
they shall perish."

In reference to the interiors of the churches of the Kremlin, I can
only find space to say, after having visited them all, that they
present a confusion of gilded and glittering aisles, pillars, alcoves,
chapels, and painted domes, which baffles any thing like accurate
description. The Cathedral of the Assumption is literally lined with
gilding, daubs of paintings representing scriptural scenes, figures
and pictures of saints, dragons and devils of every conceivable color
and oddity of design and costume, and burnished shrines and
candelabras. Through the dazzling mazes of this sacred edifice crowds
of devotees, priests, and penitents are continually wandering; here,
casting themselves upon their knees, and bowing down before some
gold-covered shrine; there standing in mute and rapt adoration before
some pictured symbol of eternity--grandees, beggars, and all; the
priests bearing tapers and chanting; the air filled with incense; the
whole scene an indescribable combination of moving appeals to the
senses. All the churches of the