s. There are streets which seem to be made up chiefly of
churches,--churches of all sizes and colors, crowned with beautiful
and fantastic domes, which, in turn, are surmounted by crosses of the
most charming and original designs.

Yaroslavl, founded in 1030, claims the honor of having had the first
Russian theatre, and to have sheltered Biron, the favorite of the
Empress Anna Ioannovna (a doubtful honor this), with his family, during
nineteen years of exile. But its architectural hints and revelations of
ancient fashions, forms, and customs, are its chief glory, not to be
obscured even by its modern renown for linen woven by hand and by
machinery. For a person who really understands Russian architecture,--
not the architecture of St. Petersburg, which is chiefly the invention
of foreigners,--Yaroslavl and other places on the northern Volga in
this neighborhood, widely construed, are mines of information and
delight. However, as there are no books wherewith a foreigner can inform
himself on this subject, any attempt at details would not only seem
pedantic, but would be incomprehensible without tiresome explanations
and many illustrations, which are not possible here. I may remark,
however, that Viollet-le-Duc and Fergusson do not understand the subject
of Russian architecture, and that their few observations on the matter
are nearly all as erroneous as they well can be. I believe that very few
Russians even know much scientifically about the development of their
national architecture from the Byzantine style. Yaroslavl is a good
place to study it, and has given its name to one epoch of that
development.

With the exception of the churches, Yaroslavl has not much to show to
the visitor; but the bazaar was a delight to us, with its queer pottery,
its baskets for moulding bread, its bread-trays for washtubs, and a
dozen other things in demand by the peasants as to which we had to ask
explanations.

Breezy, picturesque Yaroslavl, with its dainty, independent cabbies, who
object to the mud which must have been their portion all their lives,
and reject rare customers rather than drive through it; with its
churches never to be forgotten; its view of the Volga, and its typical
Russian features! It was a fitting end to our Volga trip, and fully
repaid us for our hot-cold voyage with the _samovar_ steamer against the
stream, though I had not believed, during the voyage, that anything
could make up for the tedium. If I were to