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Wairarapa Standard, Volume XX, Issue 2029, 11 February 1887, Page 1 (Supplement)

Moscow has never quite recovered from the tires which followed and put an end to tiie French occupation in 1812. Except upon certain high days and holidays, an_ air of languor hangs about the holy city, which for many centuries was Russia’s actively beating heart. Perhaps it is partly for that very reason that it is far dearer to the Russian mind than St. Petersburg, the younger and more animated rival which has supplanted it. The city which Peter the great founded on the swampy islets at the mouth of the Neva fairly represents the force and energy of the Russian Government, the splendor of the nobles, the might of the military. But Moscow, with its hundreds of churches and shrines, its repose suggestive of some land where it is always Sunday afternoon, is fat more in keeping with the ideas nearest to the heart of the Russian people, more in harmony than the glittering Northern capital wiiii the deep devotion which the peasant feds towards (he Church, and towards that fatherland with which the Church is in hia mind eo intimately connected. From all peris of ibe. empire, from the swampy hornet oi fever and plague where the Volga pours itseit into the Caspian near Astrakhan, from the shores of the lakes and the shades of the forests lying far away northwards toward Archangel and the Arctic Ocean, from the ricii “ black soil” lands of the more genial S uth, and from the far-off settlements ''-‘retching away in progressive lines into Central Asia, there come bands of pilgrims, who wander from one shrine to another, visiting the spots which arc to the Russian mind most dear and holy, and who return to their native villages with a vast store of iL-li f ious expciicnce, and with a reputation F- raewbat akin to that of the medireval palmer who had visited the holy places at Jerusalem. Such are the visitors whom we pee standing before the porch of the Cathedral of Si. Bueil at Moscow. The men in rough caps and sheepskin tunics, with shoes made of lime-tree bark on their feet, their Ices bound round in the old Scythian or S rmatian faehiou, the women with handkerchiefs tied over their heads, all with wallets song around them and long pilgrim-staves in their hand?, from very picturesque groups as they gather before church doors or in the courts and cloisters of the monasteries. A waterproof garment—The coat of (bo toper’s stomach.