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

48RURAL SCENERY IN MOSCOW.

aspect of a colony founded but yesterday. The Kremlin alone seems destined to brave the storms, and to lire as long as the empire, of which it is the emblem and the bulwark. The idea of the irrevocable is always solemn.

In Moscow points of view abound. In the streets, you see only the houses that border them. But cross a large square, open a window, or ascend a terrace, and you immediately discover a new city spread over hills separated by valleys of wheat-fields, large pools, and even woods. This city encloses a country whose undulations resemble the waves of the sea. The sea viewed from afar, has abvays the appearance of a plain, however agitated its surface may be.

Moscow is the city for painters of character pieces ; but architects, sculptors, and historical painters have nothing to do there. Clusters and masses of edifices, isolated in deserts, present multitudes of striking pictures. This ancient capital is the only large city which, although populous, still retains all the picturesque attributes of the country. It contains as many open roads as streets, as many cultivated fields as hills covered with buildings, as many deserted valleys as public squares. After leaving the crowded centre, we find ourselves among lakes, forests, and villages, rather than in a city. Here, rises a stately monastery, surmounted with its multitudes of church-steeples ; there, hills built to the summit; others again bear only crops of corn, between them winds a stream of water; a little farther are isolated edifices, as singular as varied in their style ; among them are theatres with antique peristyles, and palaces of wood — the only private dwellings that display a national architecture.