MOSCOW. TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

Evening Post, Volume LXXV, Issue 36, 12 February 1908, Page 10

MOSCOW. TRAVELLING IN RUSSIA.

r A COMPREHENSIVE SKETCH. From St. Petersburg to Moscow the night journey is the quickest and smoothest in Russia. A gentle gliding along the rails that might be made of indiarubber, so yielding is the surface and s>o Boft is the progress— a rhythmic motion that soothes you to sleep like s, cradle song, and you sink into the soulcaressing atmosphere of droamland. When you awjjke from pleasant visions you are in the marbis city of Mobcow, where your trials begin. Sitting on an open little vehicle, v hich rattles along over the "cobbleStonen, and may shoot you out at any moimnt, you behold a forest of domes, goldon, blues, green, and many-coloured, huge crosses surmounting glittering crescents, and old churches of quaint build, whose architectural ornaments remind y6u of the roofs of Tartar tents, or the tops of Chinese pagodas. The scenes change often as you drive through the city.. Long, straggling, illpaved streets are succeeded by narrow, crooked lanes, undulating boulevards, without shops or other attractions; fine, broad thoroughfares, with magnificent palaces and modern, sumptuous houses, which again . give way to 1 vast open spaces, ancient archways, arid bulwarks; while every now and again you come upon a bit of real village life— a grassy field, kine and poultry, milkpails, and a stagnant pool, bounded on cither side by city streets. The shops v are generally storehouses of the produce of Ormuzd and of Ind, of the wares of Essen, Paris, and Manchester, sot out with little regard to effect. Large windows and tasteful dressing are only now coming into vogue. But there are noteworthy exceptions. MOSCOW'S. REGENT-STREET. Kooznetsky_ Most — the name of the Moscow Regent-street — contains much to plea-sc the eye, tempt the will, and draw out the rouble from your pocket. More characteristic still are the vast arcades or "passages," lofty, three-roved, and three-storied, .with magnificent shops and a flood, of light, compared with which the Burlington in London is but as a cabin to a palace. Russians in Moscow and elsewhere make up for the lack of dressed windows by great signboards, containing pictures of the wares for sale within, great daubs of bluo and grey, representing clumsy fishes swimming in the ocean, or roguish-looking cows getting milked by foolish virgins in luaicj rous positions, and of guileless, oxen Walking over a precipice. Another characteristic that stamps its impress on your memory if you arc passing through Moscow for tue first time is the topsy-turveydom of, things. Between the magnificent and the squalid, the artistic and the grotesque, the sublime and the, ridiculous, there is iip partition. A palace- and a hut, a church and a tavern, a. gorgeous structure and ;'■ shabby police-station, .sfctfldl side by side. Slovenliness is writ large, everywhere. Here, for example-, is one ot the wealthiest banks,.. most fashionib!e re&taurants, or "must select hot9ls in Russia — faultless in architecture, lacking no iirtistio touch. Bui the woodwork is mildewed, the bYassworlos Itirhislied, and the glass is dirty and semi-opaque. Many of the streets are in a very insanitary condition, and some' of the- sights and sounds that shock and pain you have," fortunately, not been witnessed in tho streets of a Western European town since the down of th 6 nineteenth century. I Byzantine- places of woisship, ancient .walls and bastions, qnaint aiches ' and . turrets, high five , WiCtteh-towers, and golden domes are " the salient points of Moscow as it unfolds itself rapidly before your g-aze dining a drive through 'the city. Hardly one of the streets or. lanes or boulevards is without its' church, sometimes ensconced beliinc? a clump of trees, st other times half-hidden by the selfifcserting walls of modern mansions'. Monasteries, too, spacious abodes of white and blue, red or green,' of white artel gold,, with the typical' bell-tower and its pool ' of hells — mdre sweet and -mellow h?re -than -in the west. 'Chapels of c.ise — chassbvni, as theyi are termed — are innumerable. ' These aro tiny temples, containing an altar that glistens andsparkles with burnished silver and beaten gojd. Through the open door -or closed window 3 - ou catch a glimpse of a. blazeof light from a little forest' of wax-tapers burning through a claud of incense, and of a, little congregation of pious believers, glad of a siiort surcease of the worry and pain of earth and a ( few minutes' - couverse with God and the denizens' of heaven. Outside, sit >sotne half-dozen elderly vomsn in 'a row, who fromi morning until evening beg- contributions for monasteries, churches, asylums, that are building. ' But wherever you move, in the arcades, the squares, or tho boulevards, from niches in the wall, from turrets jutting oat f rjom it, from brackets or behind iron gritting, the piety of the people is proclaimed by Byzantine images of the goldluiloed Virgin or of St. Nicholas, who with mild eyes look . benignly down on ihc bustle and turmoil, the sin and crime, of the city of white marble, from which they are being slowly but suroly ' ousted like the once-mighty gods of Greece and Some. \ COSTUMES IN MUSCOVY. ' As in a picture of Hans Makart, the streets and houses are a suitable setting for the human figures, who shuflio along mostly in high boots of half-tanned lea^ ther. Like the Venetians of old, tho - 'Muscovites are often' silent, dazed, pensive. They wear. the, far-away look of lotcs-eaters challenging and defying ■ speculation, as to how the belongings of the inner temple of mind and soul are arranged, and whether it is swept and garnished, or dwelt in by all the seven companionable spirits at once. At first your attention is monopolised, not by the human traits, but by the odd costumes and the grotesque headgear, which now end then give a street the appearance 01, a fancy ball. Sugar-loaf hats like those worn by the earliest princes of ancient Muscovy bring a smile to your lips; Persian high caps of black astrakan ; Tartar head-and-ear-hiding caps of blue, purple, vjplet, yellow, or green, the fur turned inside ; broadbiimmers, like those of the Chinese coolies ; hoods brown, black, grey, or white with pendulous tassels of gold ; grey fur-caps fashioned like the helmet of Pallas Atheno; lofty head^coverings of soft, snowy-white goat's hair of a peculiar kind, which form a most becoming sotting to a pretty face, are but a few of the types that you meet in an hour's drive, oi- see gathered together in a typical Moscow crowd on a Russian holiday. The costumes, too, are quaint and various, including almost every style and cut and stuff known 'to history since fig-foliage was first discarded in. favour of skins, and skins. gave way to homespuns. Priests, monks, soldiers, police, peasants, and rustic maids often form a majority of the ever-changing etreet population. Now and again you meet a little band of convicts — grey figures with pale faces — headed and closed by policemen moving leisurely along the streets on the way to some prison whence they will set out for Siberia. Here you deicry a number of pilgrims, unkempt, unwashed, shag-gy-bearded, who, carrying the traditioual staff and alms-bag, wend towards the Kremlin; and there a drunken man lies at full length in the street, unnoticed by the police and avoided by the Jehu,

who may at any moment be compelled by tho constable to convey him gratis to tho lockup, where he is generally thrust into oner of the foulest spots to be found in tho city of white marbls. Theso aro but a few of fcho grisly touches among tho bright and pleasing scenes that unrol themselves before tho eyes of him vfho visits the ancient capital of Russia for tho first time. Moscow is a changed and changing city. Once the head of tho Rusian Tsitrdom, it is now the soul of Russian Anarchism. Those old ideals, moral and religious, which stamped the Russian man, and, in particular, the Muscovite, with vs peculiar impress, and obtained for him admission to Christendom on his own terms, are fast fading away. Ruinous hospitality and a pow-erful-religious feeling, which drew its sustenance from the- far-off region of myth behind Christianity, once characterised the Muscovites, and made them sympathetic to all the tribes and tongues that acknowledged the sway of the Tsar. And although the old reputation clings to them still, the traits that justified it are gone, and are unlikely to reawake in the men and women of the coming generations. The Russian of 'Moscow in the days of Nicholas I. was as unlike the Western European as tho latter-da^ Hindoo is. Manners and customs, life philosophy, aims, hnd strivings, relations towards man and God, all differentiated him from his neighbours. You might feel attracted by 'him or repelled, but you could not pass ■him by as a man of no account. — London Telegraph's correspondent.