e a straight street,
a large square, or a wooded island. But Moscow has as little
resemblance to any other city. The cupolas, the flat roofs and the
trees remind one of the East; but there the cupolas are more curved,
covered with gray lead, and surmounted by delicate minarets; the
houses show no windows toward the street; and the gardens are enclosed
by high, dead, monotonous walls. Moscow has a character of its own;
and if one wishes to compare it with anything, it must be called
Byzantine-Moresque. Russia received her Christianity and first
civilization from Byzantium. Until of late years she remained
completely shut off from the East, and what culture she once adopted
became rapidly nationalized. The heavy scourge of the Mongolian and
Tartar domination, which burdened this country for nearly three
centuries, prevented for a long time any further progress. All culture
was confined to the monasteries, and to these they afterward owed
their deliverance. The Khans of Tartary never required their
submission to Islam; they satisfied themselves with the tribute. In
order to raise this, they had recourse to native authority. They
supported the power of the Grand Dukes and of the priesthood; and the
despotism of the Golden Tribe, much as it circumscribed further
improvement, strengthened the oppressed in their faith in their
religion, fidelity to their rulers, and love to their mutual
fatherland.

These are still the characteristics of the people; and when
one reflects that the embryo of this nation, the Great
Russians--thirty-six million people of one root, one faith, and one
language--forms the greatest homogeneous mass of people in the world,
no one will doubt that Russia has a great future before her.

It has been said that with an increase of population this boundless
empire must fall to pieces. But no part of it can exist without the
other--the woody North without the fertile South, the industrial
centre without both, the interior without the coast, nor without the
common joint stream, navigable for four hundred miles--the Volga. But,
more than all this, the national spirit unites the most distant
portions.

Moscow is now the national centre not only of the European Empire, but
of the ancient and holy kingdom of the Czars, from which the
historical reminiscences of the people spring, which, perhaps, is big
with the destinies of the future empire in spite of a deviation of two
centuries.

The foreign civilization