The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-09 00:00:00

~~` G~~

hit

N PATS
•
• • 4%4,
15144
. '-11.46",•,.•
and holy relics, among which are a nail of the rues
s
Cross, a robe of our S tviour, and a part of the robe
of the Virgin Mary, and knelt in prayer before the N. .11 S
tombs of their ancestors. Thence they walked to
the Palace of the Kremlin, where they were re!
ceived by the clergy of the Court with cross and
holy water, by the Arch-Marshal of the Coronation,
and the President and members of the Treasury of
the Palace, who presented the Empress with th
usual Russian emblems of fealty—tread and salt.
His Majesty's entrance into the Palace was an-
nounced by a salvo of 101. guns. During this
time the bells never ceased to ring, nor the people
to cheer and pray ; and the aspect presented by the
squares of the Kremlin, as the dense concourse of
people with uncovered heads besought the blessing
of Heaven on their Sovereign, has been described
to me as something very grand and affecting. The
procession and the proceedings lasted more than
three hours. Till late at night the populace con-
tinued to throng the courts and squares, and soon
after it was dark the palace and barracks of the
Kremlin were brilliantly illuminated. The Corps
Diplomatique witnessed the procession from the
windows of the palace of a princess who enter-
tained them to dinner and gave a ball in the even-
ing.

SATURDAY, AUG. 30.
The Emperor inspected the Preobraginski Regiment
of the Guard in the courtyard of the Kremlin to-day.
The troops were in magnificent order, and were much
admired, and after the parade the Tartars and Cossacks
performed various feats of horsemanship. Subsequently
several English, French, Persians, and Austrians had
the honour of being presented to his Majesty. lle leaves
the Kremlin to-night to pass the interval till the day of
his coronation in prayer and fasting at the country-
house, which has been fitted up for his reception by
Count Cheremetieff, one of the greatest and richest of
the Russian nobility. No accident of a serious character
occurred in the streets yesterday, nor was there the
smallest disturbance or violence, although the police, by
order of the Emperor, were kept out of view, and were
not permitted to appear along the line of the pro-
cession. It is said that upwards of 500,000 persons
were present at the ceremony, and their behaviour is
certainly most exemplary. There is talk of a great
act of grace for the day of the coronation—namely,
the emancipation of all who shall be borne after the

crown has been placed on the Emperor's head, but there
seems to he no foundation for it. For several days there

will be nothing to do ; and if the weather is bad, as
it threatens to be, the interval will be rather dreary
for inoit strangers in Moscow. Upwards of 100,000
troops are concentrated near Moscow ; and it is in-
tended to have a grand parade and field day on Mon-
day nexf. The Grand Duke Constantine will hold a
lev€6 tomorrow, at which foreigners of rank will be

prevented.
The magnitude and grandeur of the illuminations
can almost be realised even now, before a lamp has
been lit, and one hesitates to think of the extraor-
dinary coup d'se 1 whick will await him who gazes from
the Kremlin on the undulating expanse of twinkling
fires which will extend for many a mile like some new
firmament around him. Every house in this vast city
is provided with some external framework for the dis-
play of coloured lamps ; the windows and the door
frames, the very eaves, are furnished with light slips of
wood, plain or painted, to which are affixed loops of
wire for holding the small glass cups filled with oil and
wick, which will furnish the larger part of the illumi-
nations. In some instances these frames are laiehly
ornamental, although they are the work of the mujik
with the universal axe. The fineness and lightness of
the workmanship is wonderful, considering the persons
and the instruments by which it is executed. The
palaces, the churches, and the public buildings and
offieeo which are. innumerable, display ambitious
screens and devices, of which the most usual are the
Imperial N (or H, as it is written in Russian) and
triangles and stars in wood. The walls of the boule-
vards of the Kremlin, of the Government edifices—nay,
the rails along the streets—wilt he decorated in a simi-
lar fashion, and the sky will be reddened by the
glare of fires as wide-spread, but more harmless than
those which lighted the French out of the ancient
capital just 44 years ago. If there is no great dis-
play of fancy, there is at all events an extent and
universality about the preparations which give them
an Oriental character, and augur well for the
result. The immense length and width of the wind-
ing streets, the irregularity of the houses, the
size and number of the squares, marketplaces,
boulevards, and public walks—aud, above all, the multi-
plicity of the churches and their infinite variety of dome,
cupola, and spire permit so many curves and lines of
light to be visible at the same time that the eye is never
fatigued by a repetitioa of the same effect. The great di fe
ficulty one experiences in finding out or seeing anything
here is to cross the gulf which separates you from the
people around you. Here is a nation in which the little
scraps of French, German, and Italian which enabled
you to get your meals, and move and have your being in
other countries, are useless, and will a rescue you from
ts'.arvßtion.
If an " enlightened foreigner" on visiting England is
but hall' as perplexed and helpless as au Englishman in
Russia, he ought to ho an object of the profoundest sym-
pathy to every ens who possesses the smallest spark of
humanity. cannot imagine any position much more
appalling than a seat in a drosky with a wild being before
you who is absolute masts'r of your fate, who does not
understand or want to understand you, who goes on
when you want to stop. and obstinately insists on knock-
ing at the most morose-looking doors and on introducing
you to a belacquered lacquey gifted with an unknown
toneue when you desire to go on, who whirls you for
wilo, through tortuous streets, studded with gilded
churches, all so like that you seem to be constantly gal-
loping pest the same edifies, whose fares are impossible,
aud whose change is r.daraleus, and whom you cannot
force to take you back to the place from whence came
you, chocked with dust, starved, and hot, you faintly
strive, by pantomime worthy of Grimaldi, to signify
that you have abandoned your search after an invisible
house, and want to return to your Russian home. But
the position is not only morally but physically painful.
No one who has not tried the adaptability of short legs
to the sides of a dray horse can conceive how dolorous
are the results of the first drive in one of those ingenious
vehicles, whereon you sit straddle-legged behind the
driver, whom you are sometimes driven involuntarily to
embrace as he whirls round a corner in his mad career.
The seat is about as pleasant as that on the back of an
Irish ;minting car with both sides removed. There are
droskies of another and more convenient form, but the
Russians always engage them, and the others remain
unused until the unwary stranger, yielding to the force
of circumstances and the sense of novelty, mounts, and
is lost for the day. In vain does he consult his vocabu-
lary. He can find out what is the Russian for "a
preserve where they keep live fish," or, " I
trust, honoured sir, that you possess excellent
health," and many pleasant phrases for shopping
and for tea-drinking, but he will not di ever the
smallest clue to the mystery of communicating to the
driver his desire to "get down and have another car-
ri ige." Should he artfully construct a compound sea.
tence, and with infinite pains give it utterance in speech,
the hairy ruler of his destinies for 'the day shakes his
head and shrugs his shoulders at the jargon addressed to
him, in whioh a few "schtch's" and " tchsch's" are left
out very probably, and, imagining it to be some remon-
strance on the score of speed, urges his horse at a flying
gallop over the wavy wooden pavement. Such have been
the sufferings of the man who cannot speak Russian and
who cannot get a valet de place in St. Petersburg ; and
they are, if pos=ible, aggravated in Mosc)w. It must
be admitted that the drosky-drivers are intelligent and
obliging, but "nods and becks and wreathed smiles"
will not supply the place of the vernacular, and English-
men are so little used to pantomime that they are, gene-
rally speaking, less successful thin their neighbours in
the use of it. It is quite true that evsry officer, almost
every well-dressed man one sees in the streets, speaks
French or German, but, even if he can be stopped and
spoken to, his instructions to the driver only carry the
stranger to one point, where it is likely enough he will
not get.