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

296THE CITY BY MOONLIGHT.

eiated, Moscow has been obliged to have recourse to commerce and industry. They boast of its silk manufactories. But the history and the architecture are still here to preserve its imprescriptible rights to political supremacy. The Russian government favours the pursuits of industry: being unable altogether to stem the torrent of the age, it prefers enriching the people to enfranchising them.

This evening, towards ten o'clock, the sun sank, and the moon rose. The turrets of the convents, the spires of the chapels, the towers, the battlements, the palaces, and all the irregular and frowning masses of buildings that form the Kremlin, were here and there swathed with wreaths of light as resplendent as golden fringes, while the body of the city was seen only by the remaining beams of day. which momentarily faded on the painted tiles, the copper cupolas, the gilded chains, and the metallic roofs, that make the firmament of Moscow. These edifices, the

The most numerous were the truly national drow-skas, those tiny summer sledges, which being unable conveniently to carry more than one person at a time, are multiplied to infinity in order to meet the