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

300DESCRIPTION OF THE FORTRESS.

coloured glaciers. The obscurity no doubt contributed to increase the size of objects, and to give them unusual forms and tints, — I say tints, for night, like engravings, has its colouring. To behold gentlemen and ladies, dressed à la parisienne, promenading at the feet of this fabulous palace, was to fancy myself in a dream. What would Ivan III., the restorer, or, it might be said, the founder of the Kremlin, have thought, could he have beheld at the foot of the sacred fortress, his old Muscovites, shaved, curled, in frock coats, white pantaloons, and yellow gloves, eating ices, seated before a brightly-lighted cafe ? He would have said, as I do, jt is impossible ! and yet this is now seen every summer evening in Moscow.

I have, then, wandered in the public gardens planted on the glacis of the ancient citadel of the Czars; I have seen the towers, wall above wall, the platforms, terraee upon terrace, and my eyes have swept over an enchanted city. It would need the eloquence of youth, which every thing astonishes and surprises, to find words analogous to these prodigious things. Above a long vault, which I crossed, I per-eeived a raised viaduct, by which carriages and foot-passengers enter the holy city. The spectacle was bewildering; nothing but towers, gates, and terraces, raised one above the other, steep slopes, and piled arches, all serving to form the road by which the Moscow of the present day, the vulgar Moscow, is left for the Kremlin — the Moscow of miracle and of history. These aqueducts, without water, support other stories of more fantastic edifiees. I observed, raised upon one of the hanging passages, a low round tower, all bristling with battlements of spear-heads. The silver