ch is crowned by a dome 138 feet high, with smaller
cupolas at the four corners. Standing in the centre of the Kremlin, this
church is the heart not only of Moscow but of all Russia, for here the
Tsars are crowned, while the bells of Ivan Veliki peal over the city.
The interior of the cathedral presents an indescribable effect. The
light from the narrow windows high up is very dim, and is further dulled
by gilded banners with pictures of saints and crosses. The temple nave
is crammed with religious objects, iconostases and icons, sacred
portraits of solid gold with only the hands and faces coloured. Wax
candles burn before them, from which the smoke rises up to the vaulted
roof, floating about the banners in a greyish-blue mist.

To the orthodox Russians the Kremlin is almost a holy place. They make
pilgrimages to its temples and cloisters with the same reverence as
Tibetans to the sanctuaries of Buddha. "Moscow is surpassed only by the
Kremlin, and the Kremlin only by heaven," they say.

Perhaps no year in the history of Moscow is so famous as the year 1812.
Then the city was taken by Napoleon and the Grande Armee. The Russian
army abandoned the city, and the citizens left their homes. Napoleon
entered on September 14, and next day the city began to burn. The
Russians had set fire to it themselves in several places. Three-fourths
of the city lay in ashes when the French evacuated Moscow after an
occupation of five weeks and the loss of 30,000 men. The remembrance of
this dreadful time still survives among the populace.

ST. PETERSBURG AND HOME

From Moscow an express train takes us in eleven hours to the capital of
Peter the Great, St. Petersburg, at the mouth of the Neva, in the Gulf
of Finland. Here we are in the midst of very different scenes from those
in Moscow. Here is no longer genuine uncontaminated Russia, but Western
civilisation, which has come and washed away the Slavonic. The churches
and monasteries indeed are built in the same style as in Moscow, and the
eyes meet with the same types and costumes, and the same heavily laden
waggons and carts rumble over the Neva bridges; but one feels and sees
only too plainly that one is in Europe.

The Neva is forty miles long and a third of a mile broad, and comes from
Lake Ladoga. It is spanned by four fine bridges, always crowded with
carriages and foot passengers, and in summer numerous small steamboats
ply up and down. In winter thick ice lies on the river d