The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-02-01
MOSCOW
A CITY DIFFERENT FROM ANY
 OTHER KNOWN.
"Great Brute Empire" Better Under
 stood After Seeing it's Capital of E Which it is the Heart.

Moscow Correspondence of The New York
 Mail and Express.
 Not until you have seen Moscow have you seen Russia. When you have seen Moscow you begin at last to understand "the great brute empire" of which it ts the heart, of which it still remains the true capital, the decree of Peter the Great to the contrary notwithstanding. Just as the empire of the Czar Is . thing apart from all the empires of to- day or yesterday. so Is Moscow city set apart from any city of modern Europe. from any city that has f1ourished within the ken of man. It embodies in its ar- chitecture. it's atmosphere and its inhab- ftants as you come to think the very soul of the Steppes, the wide. free life. the superstition. the aspiration, the wild bar barrie beauty. the poetry and melancholy of the nomad nations who have wandered at will through all the countries over the great northern plain.
 In Moscow the stranger Is under a spell woven of many entertainments The things for which it stands just touch upon one side the European history with which every one is familiar, and then shade off upon the other into the dim tra- recorded. but whose movements have shaped the history of the world-the na- tions that marched to and from behind the scenes while Goth and Frank and Vandal swept across the map of civiliza- tion, with the fearful backward glance that told of a power and a secret terror behind.
 Whatever value the traditions of Mos- cow have, history has yet to appraise. and each visitor may rate them as he will Half the charm of the city lies in t. s.z- Iz&s Ntrne e1x1~ AIrA men its monuments commemorate were really great figures in the amending drama of civilization or were tribal chief fsAns Of uncommon stature whose deeds eisnified nothing outside their own boun- diaries and their own time; whether 'the battles. sieges, fortunes" of this nyste- Iious city of the steppes really deserve the obscurity in which to all but Rus sian eyes they are enveloped or should be blazoned to the world like the history of Rome.
 Visions in Shadows of kremlin.
 Whatever decision one reaches a singlI- lar and arresting vision arises before him es he stands within the Kremlin on the brow of the acclivity overlooking the Moscow River. In the plain about him he sees city after city spring up-strange churches, half shrines and half camp. miserable novels of logs. vast rambling palaces built of wood-spring tip and dis appear in flames set by careless hand or kindled by a desert conqueror. He sees q primitive white people doing outpost work for western civilization against the Tartar terror. doing it none too well, and finally lying down before it.
 He sees half-naked khans eating sun- flower seeds and swearing by the Proph- hn O ehrines of the orthodox faith and give their orders to humbled Russian Princes. lie sees the Pole. not as an outcast with out a memory, but as a. conquering and insolent overlord banqueting in the Krem- fin palaces and upholding with free but ruthless hand the majesty of the most Fwarike power of Europe. He sees het- man make themselves princes and high prieses become Czars. and these Csars he beholds issuing through the sacred Gates of the Redeemer on forays against border enemies or entering it on Palm Sunday bareheaded. leading by the bridle the ass that bears the patriarch to his devotions.
 The panorama fascinates. though it means as little as the mirage of city descried upon a sun-harried plain. Its figures, half phantom though they may be. stand out with disdnctiveness. be- cause there is nothing in foreground and background to detract from them. The past lives in Moscow. There are Tartar and Pole and Cossack and beggar and peasant very much as they must always have been. Here are the strange figures of the farther East. no longer looking strange; restless-eyed Bashkirs. Chinese merchants. lean-faced and lcng-striding, clad in voluminous silks and bearing themselves like Princes rather than he- lots.