Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

copper crosses, gilt, and the comphcated designs of which look like work of filagree. The number and disposition of the steeples have always a symbolical religious meaning: they signify the ranks in the ecclesiastical hierarchy. They image the patriarch, surrounded by his priests, his deacons, and sub-deacons, lifting between heaven and earth his radiant head. A fanciful variety characterises this more or less richly adorned roof-work; but the primitive intention, the theological idea, is always scrupulously respected.

Bright chains of gilded or plated metal unite the crosses of the inferior steeples to the principal tower: and this metallic net, spread over an entire city, produces an effect that it would be impossible to convey, even in a picture. The holy legion of steeples, without having any precise resemblance to the human form, represents a grotesque assemblage of personages gathered together on the summits of the churches and chapels, — a phalanx of phantoms hovering over the eity.

The exteriors of the mystic domes of the Russian churches are worked in a most elaborate manner. They remind the stranger of a cuirass of Damascus steel; and the sight of so many scaly, enamelled, spangled, striped, and chequered roofs, shining in the sun with various but always brilliant colours, strikes him with the most lively astonishment. The desert, with its dull sea-green tint, is, as it were, illuminated by this magical net-work of carbuncles. The play of light, in the aerial city, produces a species of phantasmagoria, in broad clay, which reminds one of the reflected brilliance of lamps in the shop of a lapidary. These changing hues impart to Moscow an aspect altogether