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

DESCRIPTION OF THE FORTRESS.299

remind me of Europe ; but I could not interest myself with these amusements: I was under the walls of the Kremlin, — that colossal mountain raised for tyranny by the hands of slaves. For the modern city a public promenade has been made, a species of garden planted in the English taste, round the walls of the ancient fortress of .Moscow. How am I to describe the walls of "the Kremlin ? The word walls gives an idea of quite too ordinary an object; it would deceive the reader: the walls of the Kremlin are a chain of mountains. This citadel, reared on the confines of Europe and Asia, is, as compared with ordinary ramparts, what the Alps are to our hills : the Kremlin is the Mont Blanc of fortresses. If the giant that is called the Russia Empire had a heart, I should say that the Kremlin was the heart of the monster; but, as it is, I would call it the head.

I wish I could give an idea of this mighty pile of stones, reared step by step into the heavens; this asylum-of despotism, raised in the name of liberty : for the Kremlin was a barrier opposed to the Calnmcs by the Russians: its walls have equally aided the independence of the state and the tyranny of the sovereign. They are boldly carried over the deep sinuosities of the soil. When the declivities of the nillocks become too precipitous, the rampart is lowered by steps: these steps, rising between heaven and earth, are enormous; they are the ladder for the giants who make war against the gods.

The line of this first girdle of structures is broken by fantastic towers, so elevated, strong, and grotesque in form, as to remind one of the peaks in Switzerland, with their many-shaped rocks, and their many-O 6