Connecticut western news., 1883-06-13
THE GROWN OF THE CHARS.
Something of Interest About the Wearing
 Of their Crowns.


 The fashion of Russias imperial cor onations has changed almost as often as the spot where they were celebrated Ruric, the first Russian sovereign. fixed his capital at Great Novgorod, about 100 miles from the present site of St. Peters burg. In the ensuing century it was superseded by Kieff, on the Dnieper. hletf Ill turn gave place to Vladimir, be- tween Moscow and Nini-Novgorod. MOSCOW Itself ranked as the metropolis of Russia from the middle of the fifteenth century to the foundation of St. Peters burg at the opening of the eighteenth. In the eyes of all true Russians. ''Moth- CT Moscow" as they affectionately call the great city; is still the real centre of national life, and the fitting place for the coronation of their sover- elgns and the consecration of their Arch | bishops. In fact, the bulk of the popu- latlon rank their " Belo-kamennaya Moskva" (White- walled Moscow, as far above St. Petersburg as the Italians rank Rome above Florence, or as the Afghans rank Kandahar above Cabul.
 The gorgeous ceremonial which has just drawn upon Moscow the eyes of the whole civilized world has certainly but | little in common with the barbarous rite of the tenth century, when the fierce spearmen of the Dnieper raised their ''Great Prince" upon buckler of hide, and swore "by their weapons"-the cus- | tomary oath of these wild warriors-to be true to him and to each other. But the various coronations of the House of Romanoff undoubtedly form a very gloomy retrospect. Its founder, Michael Feodorovitch, was crowned amid the ruins of Moscow, which had been de- stroyed by the Polish invasion of 1912, and but for the devotion of a Russian peasant his reign would have been ended by treacherous murder before it had we'll begun. A similar fate overlook his third successor, Peter the Great, who | signalized his accession by beheading hundreds of his insurgent Lifeguardsmen close to the gate by which Alexander III. entered the Kremlin. Peters daughter, Elizabeth, owed her crown to the violent disposition of her predecessor, Anna Ivanovna. Catharine LIS coro- nation was celebrated while the corpse of her murdered husband, Peter TIL, lay unburled in the gloomy old palace of Oranienbaum, 20 miles away, and the very hands which held out the crown to Alexander I. at the opening of the pres ent century, had strangled his father. Paul.
 But even more sinister omens attended the accession of Nicholas in 1925. Only 8 few months before 1t two thirds of St. Petersburg had been laid in ruins by the overfiowing of the Neva, and to the fury of the elements was added the yet more fatal rage of civil war. In December, 1925, the capital was convulsed by 8 deadly conflict between the adherents of the Grand Duke Constantine-known in history as the Decembrists- those of his brother Nicholas. The Decem- brist party fought desperately, but the powerful artillery and ruthless determi- nation of Nicholas speedily crushed all resistance. Thousands were slain, thousands more dragged away to Siberia, and not 8 few hanged or shot after the fight was over Among these last was a Russian poet of some note, who defed his doom in caustic parody of one of Nicholas's proclamations, often remembered and repeated during the thirty years tyranny that ensued: :: To the soul said he:
 Unto darkness flee,
 Thus decree.'"
 Alexander IT, coming to the throne amid the accumulated disasters of the Crimean war, found his crown thorny one indeed. It was noticed by many that during the ceremony of coronation his handsome face was clouded with deep sadness, and that on the same night a terrific storm broke over the city, shat tering magnificent monument which bore his name. The sinister augury was only too truly fulfilled. His eldest son Nicholas, was snatched from him by death in the very midst of those mighty reforms which marked the nine years between the serf emancipation of 1861 and the "Moscow conspiracy" of 1870, while his own life was ended by the hand of an assassin at the very moment when he was about to give to Russia the Con- stitution for which she had so long waited in vain.