The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1869-10-30
General Appearance Of Moscow.

When you enter Moscow you are in reali
ty in an Asiatic city, Among the cab
drivers, in long blue caftans and low felt
hats, you see a large sprinkling of bronze
colored faces, betokening Tartar origin
Then as you pass the store-windows, you
arc struck with the large proportions of
| Turkish, Indian, and other Asiatic articles
of merchandise. The cloud of dust before
you is raised by drove of long-feeced
sheep from beyond the Ural Mountains, and
! their driver has the features and unmistak-
able clothing of the Persian. Scarcely
have you reached your hotel before guide
presents his claims to conduct you to the
! Caspian, to start the next morning at sun
rise. But the style of architecture, which
is bizarre to surfeit, is more decidedly
| Asiatic than any other feature of this in
teresting city, for four centuries the Rus
sian capital. The are three hundred and
seventy churches, besides an immense num-
Der of solitary chapels; and the domes of
nearly all of them are overlaid with gold or
silver, which does not need to be renewed
for about fifty years. Let it not be mag
ined that each church has but one dome or
cupola. These Greco-Russian sanctuaries
make greater pretensions than that, for
over each inward lateral chapel, of which
there are often marv in single church,
rises a separate dome. Ihave counted over
one church alone as many as eleven domes,
all rejecting dazzling light from their
gilded roofs. Scores of churches have from
three to five of these radiant cupolas.
| The streets are as irregular as those of
| st. Petersburg are uniform, and I have al
ready become accustomed to the luxury of
losing my way, and finding myself, after a
walk of an hour or two, just where l had
started. The city covers a large surface,
and its entire circuit is twenty miles. 1t
has the form Of a trapezium, and is beauti-
fed internally by two concentric circular
lines of boulevards. One would think that,
from the fate which has visited Moscow so
frequently, it would have altogether lost
| its ancient appearance, and become occi-
dental and modern. But just the reverse
is the case.
What has this proud city, endowed with
the fatal gift of beauty, not suffered p
Tamerlane took and ravaged it in his own
style; then the Tartars sacked it, and put
its inhabitants to the sword; then fire des-
troyed the most of its houses and two thou
sand of its citizens; then came the Tartars
again, and in the flames their bloody hands
kindled one hundred thousand lives went
out; then came the Poles, and another gem
eral fire; then the awful plague of III;
and last of all, Napoleon-the worst of
plagues-and that greatest evidence of ma
tional sacrifice in all history, the voluntary
destruction, by the Russians own hands,
of at once his Jerusalem and his Mecca
There seems to have been a constant dis
position to build on the ruins, houses as
much like the old ones as possible; and
therefore, while the city is largely new
except the great thick walls that peer out
now and then from beneath the renovator's
less substantial work-it has an ancient
appearance, especially as you approach the
kremlin, the holy of HOLES to every Russian
heart.