All the Russias : travels and studies in contemporary European Russia, Finland, Siberia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia

Front matter

TRAVELS AND STUDIES IN CONTEMPORARY

EUROPEAN RUSSIA, FINLAND, SIBERIA

THE CAUCASUS, AND CENTRAL ASIA

Preface

THIS volume is the outcome of fifteen years' interest in Russian affairs, culminating in four journeys — one of nearly 20,000 miles — in European and Asiatic Russia. In the course of these, besides a residence of some time in St. Petersburg and visits to the principal cities, I travelled in Finland, in Siberia as far as Lake Baikal ( I had previously been to Vladivostok), in the Caucasus, and in Central Asia as far as the frontier of Kashgar. During all these journeys I was afforded opportunities of seeing and investigating every matter that interested me, and of making the acquaintance of the chief Russian administrators in every part. Indeed, official courtesy went so far as to convey me, by a special train and a special steamer, to places I could not otherwise have seen, and to provide for my safety on another occasion by an escort of Cossacks.

In case the reader may wonder how, without a mastery of the Russian language, I held the conversations and made the inquiries here described, I may say that during my chief journeys I took with me as interpreter a young Russian gentleman, a student of law at the University of Moscow, whose knowledge and intelligent sympathy were of the greatest service to me. Without such help, or the ability to speak Russian fluently, a journey for any serious purpose in Russia outside the two capitals would be a waste of time.

iv PREFACE

It has not been my object to write a comprehensive account of Russian institutions and Russian Hfe. This exists in admirable form in the two volumes of Sir Donald Mackenzie Wallace, which remain, when allowance is made for the changes since their publication, the most instructive and trustworthy general work upon Russia. My own modest aim has been to present a picture of the aspects of contemporary Russia of most interest to foreign readers, with especial reference to the recent remarkable industrial and commercial development of Russia, and the possibility of closer commercial and political relations between Russia and Great Britain. This last I regard as the most important question (after Anglo-American relations) in British foreign politics to-day.

As in former books, I have tried to present in their natural relationship the picturesque surface and the solid substratum of fact, in the hope of making my pages at the same time entertaining and informing. I trust, therefore, that the reader will not resent the occasional close proximity of the light and the weighty.

It has been my strenuous endeavour to be fair and frank in my judgments, and so far as one may, to divest myself of inborn and acquired prejudices. I have never accepted any courtesy that might in the slightest degree fetter my freedom of speech. Feelings about each other, however, run so high in both Russians and Englishmen that it is probably impossible for a writer of either country to hold the balance of his judgment perfectly level, but I anticipate with satisfaction that in England I shall be regarded as too pro-Russian, and in Russia as too anti- Russian.

With two insignificant exceptions — the Governor of Sam-

PREFACE V

arkand and the Chief of PoHce at Askhabad — I received at all times the greatest kindness and courtesy, indeed, the most friendly help, from Russian officials everywhere. The list of all to whom I owe thanks, including many British representatives, would be too long, and I must therefore content myself with a cordial acknowledgment in general terms. I cannot omit, however, to beg His Excellency, Monsieur de Witte, Minister of Finance, to accept my most sincere and respectful thanks for permitting me to have frequent recourse to his distinguished assistance, and for honouring my journeys with a sympathy which opened to me every official door in Russia.

To escape one minor criticism I may say that my rendering of Russian proper names exhibits certain inconsistencies, but that, while retaining accepted spellings of familiar names, I have endeavoured to follow a simple and accurate system of transliteration.

The majority of my illustrations are reproduced from my own photographs. The rest I procured in the places where they were taken. The striking photographs of Their Majesties the Tsar and Tsaritsa were taken by Messrs. Gan & Co., of Tsarskoe Selo. The maps have been specially drawn for this volume. H. N.

Contents

THE CAPITALS

CHAPTER PACK

I. St. Petersburg and the Way There . . . . i II. The Two Moscows, and a Few Reflections . •23

Conclusion

XXVI. Retrospect and Prospect 449

APPENDIX 457

INDEX , 459

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

T. M. THE Tsar and Tsaritsa at Home .... Frontispiece

PAGE

The Russian Policeman i

The Fortress and Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Petersburg . 4

Cathedral of St, Isaac, St. Petersburg facing 8

The Nevski Prospect, St. Petersburg 11

The Ministry of War, St. Petersburg facing 20

Gate and Chapel of the Old City, Moscow 23

A Gate of the Old City, Moscow 25

Women in the Sunday Market, Moscow 27

The Cathedral of St. Basil the Beatified, Moscow, Sixteenth Century 29 The Kremlin, Moscow, from the Kamenny Bridge . , . .31

The Kremlin, Moscow t,t,

H. M. THE Tsar at the Manoeuvres facing 36

The Kremlin Square and Memorial of Alexander III., Moscow . . 37

Broken Down on the Steppe 39

Tapping the Telegraph for Help 43

The Home of the Romanoffs, Moscow .45

The Gateway of Yasnaya Polyana 51

Count Tolstoy at Home 53

Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy's Home (Front) . . . . -56

Yasnaya Polyana, Count Tolstoy's Home (Back) 57

A Country House in Finland 66

The City and Harbour of Helsingfors 68, 69

The Diet House, Helsingfors 71

The Burghers' Chamber 72

Finland's Love for Alexander II 73

The Finnish Landscape — Mountain, Lake, Forest, Field . . -75

A Road in Finland 77

A Finnish Mourning Stamp . 79

Finnish Agriculture — Burning the Woods for a Seed-bed . . .81

Arhippaina Miihkali, the Finnish Blind Bard 84

The Rune-singers 86

Finnish Types 88

Salmon Traps in Finland 90

A Finnish Wedding: The Bride's Prayer on Leaving Home . . .92 " " Veiling the Dowered Bride . . . .93

ix

X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

A Finnish Pearl-fisher 95

A Siberian Locomotive 103

A Party of Russian Engineers in the Primeval Forest . . .105 The Top of the Urals — the Water-parting between Europe and

Asia .113

The Railway in the Urals .114

The Steamship "Baikal" Steaming through the Ice . . . .121

Bow OF THE "Baikal" Breaking the Ice 122

The Last Station in Europe 128

The Boundary between Europe and Asia 129

The Town of Zlataoust from the Railway 131

Gold-diggers Waiting for the Train 133

What you See for Days from the Siberian Express .... 134 The Water-tower and Store-house at Every Station . . . .135

The Regular Siberian Station 137

Siberian Peasants Watching the Train 139

Building a Hut in the Taiga 140

The Tower of the Fire-watch, Irkutsk 142

The City of Irkutsk 143

The Technical School, Irkutsk . 147

The Museum, Irkutsk 149

The Cathedral, Irkutsk 151

Poor Siberian Peasant 152

Prosperous Siberian Peasant . . -155

Inside the Prison, Irkutsk— A Group of Convicts to be "Distributed " 160

The Volga . 166

A Timber Barge on the Volga 167

Caucasian Types — Tatars . -173

" . "A Tekkin Family i75

" " The Real Circassian 177

Batum 179

Vladikavkaz, at the Foot of the Caucasus 183

The Georgian Road : A Woolly Wave 186

" " " Russian Fort in the Pass 189

" " " The Castle of Princess Tamara in the Gorge

OF Dariel 192

" ** " Round the Mountain Side 194

" " " The Top of the Pass— Old Road . . .195

" " " Crossing the Summit 197

" " How THE Road comes down at Mleti . . 199

Shoeing an Ox in the Caucasus . 201

Tiflis 203

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi

PAGE TiFLIS AND THE RUINS OF THE CiTADEL 20$

A Bit of Old.Tiflis 207

A Caucasian Type — Rostom the Guide 208

WiNE-SKINS AND THE WiNE-SHOP, TiFLIS 2IO

The Shampooer of Tiflis 211

A Chat at the Wine-shop, Tiflis 212

A Wandering Beggar, Tiflis . , 213

A "Fountain" at Baku 221

The Railway Station, Baku 225

The Landing-Stage at Krasnovodsk 229

The Railway Station, " . 231

The Trans-Caspian Train 232

Geok Tepe, the Old Ramparts and the New Railway . . . 235

A Glass of Tea While the Train Stops 241

A Mystery in Trans-Caspia — Turkomans Examining the Train . . 244

Bread-sellers at a Station . . 250

In the New Tashkent 274

Tashkent : A Cossack Patrol 276

" The Boys' College 278.

** A Familiar Sight 280

" The Area 282

" Father and Son 284

Bokhara : City and Citadel 298

" The Portal of the Amir's Palace 300

" The "Batcha" . . 302

*' The Unveiled Ladies . . 303

" A Street Grimacer 307

" The Tower of Executions 308

" The Approach to the Prison 311

** The Prison Gate and the Gaoler 312

** The Door of the Great Prison 314

" The Horror of Horrors 316

Samarkand: The Rigistan 321

A Sart 323

The Madrassa Shir Dar 324

The Madrassa of Ulugh Beg 325

Interior of Shir Dar 327

Portal of the Tomb of Tamerlane 329

The Tomb of Tamerlane 330

" " " The Upper Chamber . . . 331

" " " The Crypt Where He Lies . 332

Mausoleum of Bibi Khanum 334

Xll

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Samarkand : Tomb of Bibi Khanum ....

" Mausoleum and Mosque of Shah Zindah

" Interior of Shah Zindah

" The Hour of Prayer

The Avenue of Andijan The Native Policeman of Andijan Packing Cotton in Andijan The Entrance to Osh A Kirghiz Family Shopping in Osh A Mother and Daughter of Osh and their Home "Osh, and No Mistake!" — The End of My Journey His Excellency M. de Witte, Minister of Finance

PAGE

MAPS

PAGE

The Trans-Siberian Railway {Eastern Section) 107

Railways of the Caucasus . . . . 215

Railway Expansion in Asia / facing 260

THE CAPITALS

Chapter I

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE

R

USSIA!"

Wiliat a flock of thoughts take wing as the word strikes the ear! Does any word in any language, except the dear name of one's own land, mean as much to-day?

What is Russia? The unfettered, irresponsible, limitless, absolute rule of one man over a hundred millions of his fellows — is that it? The ikon in the corner of every room where the language is spoken, the blue-domed basilica in every street of great cities, the long-haired priests chanting in deep bass, the pedestrian ceaselessly crossing himself, the Holy Synod, whose God-given task it is to coerce or to cajole a heathen world to orthodoxy — is that Russia? Or is it the society of the capital, speaking all languages, familiar with all literatures, practising every art, lapped in every luxury, esteeming manners more highly than morals? > ^^V Or is it the vast and nearly roadless country,

where settlements are to distances like flyspecks to window-panes; where the conveniences, the comforts, and often the decencies of civilisation may be sought in vain outside the towns and away

The Russian Policeman from the lines of railway; where entire villages are the prey of disease; where seven people out of every ten can neither read nor write?

Siberia is Russia — five million square miles, in which whole countries are a quivering carpet of wild-flowers in spring, a rolling grain-field in autumn, an ice-bound waste in winter, stored full of every mineral, crossed by the longest railway in the world, and largely inhabited by a population of convicts and exiles.

Central Asia is Russia — a million and a half square miles of barren desert and irrigated oasis, the most famous cities of Asia and the greatest river, a few years ago the hot-bed of Mussulman fanaticism, probably the cradle of the human race, and possibly the scene of its most fateful conflict.

The Eastern Question is— how will Russia try again to get Constantinople? The Far Eastern Question is — will Russia succeed in dominating China? A question of questions for the British Empire is — will Russia attempt to invade India?

The Triple Alliance is a league against Russia. The Dual Alliance is Russia's reply. Russia called the nations to the Conference of Peace.

It would be easier to say what is not Russia. In worldafTairs, wherever you turn you see Russia; whenever you listen you hear her. She moves in every path; she is mining in every claim. The '' creeping murmur " of the world is her footfall — the '' poring dark " is her veil. To the challenge of the nations, as they peer from their borders, comes ever the same reply —

'' Who goes there? "

''Russia!''

It is a long way to St. Petersburg on the map. Across a corner of France, right across Belgium, across Germany, and a final northward stretch up to the Gulf of Finland — what an endless railway journey it must be ! As a matter of fact, the capital of Russia is a whole. day nearer London by rail than Seville, and

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE 3

exactly the same distance as Naples. You leave Charing Cross at eleven; an engine, dining-car and sleeping-car of the International Sleeping-Car Company are waiting on a siding at Calais; as soon as the conductor has secured all the passengers on his list the little train starts with a rush, and hardly checks its almost alarming speed until it lands you on the platform at Brussels, ahead of the train from Ostend which brings the direct passengers from Dover — the better route — by its proper few minutes. Only once are you delayed by one of the ridiculous performances so dear to the heart of the Continental official. At Blandain, where the train enters Belgium, all the registered luggage is bundled out upon the platform, hastily fumbling porters thread string through the buckles and handles of each bag and portmanteau, and a solemn functionary, approaching like a questioner of the Inquisition, affixes lead seals to the knots, by means of a pair of iron forceps a yard long. You leave Brussels at four minutes past six, the German frontier is crossed at Herbesthal at half-past nine, and you are in bed as the train runs through Cologne at eighteen minutes past eleven. While you are taking your morning coffee the miles of new houses, wide streets, and long avenues of Berlin flash by — the newest-looking capital in the world, and all day long the plains of agricultural Germany unroll, where innumerable stacks of straw prove how grain grows under an agrarian tariff.

Military concentration is writ large over the railway hereabouts. At every station as you approach the frontier the lines expand into a dozen, each alongside a platform, obviously that trains may be filled and emptied quickly, collected or distributed without block and delay, if ever it should be necessary to hurl the military might of Germany northward. So far as transport is concerned, the fateful word '' Mobilise " would evidently find everything as ready on this frontier as on the other. One mailed fist stretches over the Rhine, but another is clenched by the Baltic. Eydtkuhnen, the last frontier station, is of course filled with uniforms, and as the train moves on we catch, through the dusk, glimpses of fortifications low and broad and new, as we have seen several times already, commanding the line and its approaches. I find myself wondering, as we glide away, at which platform the group of German officers stood a few years ago to look for their traveller from over the frontier, standing at the sleeping-car door with a packet in his hand — a packet which betrayed one of the best-kept secrets of the world; which caused quick recalls and surprising promotions in that class of men

The Fortress and Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. Petersburg.

who serve their countries by combining the roles of gentleman and spy; which gave the hangman a hasty job in the recesses of a famous fortress, and threw upon the charity of His Majesty the Tsar — never sought in such circumstances in vain — a widow and a child.

You make your entry into Russia like a thief in the night. It is after .eight o'clock, and dark, when you all pour in anxious flood from the train into the Customs Hall at Vierzhbolovo, or in German, Wirballen. Commanding figures in grey and gold, whom you take at the first glance to be at least Major-Gen-

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE 5

erals, but who are really officers of police and Customs, stand by the doors; a soldier collects passports as the passengers enter until he has a great sheaf of all sizes and colours; and a little army of porters in blouses and magenta belts and top-boots carries off the luggage, and quickly sorts it by the baggage numbers it bears. The officials gather round a table in the middle of the hall, where the passports are registered and stamped with a notice that you cannot leave Russia again without a police permit, or without a Russian passport if your stay has lasted six months. I expected that our luggage would be ransacked through and through. On the contrary, I have never been more courteously treated, nor more expeditiously dispatched. But the striking contrast with all other Continental Custom Houses was the silence, the discipHne, the routine, the order — there was neither rudeness nor chatter.

The gauge of the Russian railway is wider than the German, with the obvious intention of preventing German rolling-stock from being available in Russia in case of invasion, so you change cars here — the only time between Calais and St. Petersburg — and in the night, with the wood-sparks belching from the big engine and tearing past the carriage windows, you pursue your unseen way through the mysterious country whose name has sounded differently in your ear from the name of every other country on the map since first you heard it. You only know it is Russia, because it differs so much from every description you have read of it. The mahogany-panelled carriage is lighted by a score of candles, among which more silent, dignified servants move, pouring vodka and bringing tea in glasses — and this is the only Russian thing, so far, in which popular rumour has met its liabilities.

Express speed in Russia, as exemplified by the Nord Express, is about twenty miles an hour, so the wide car runs easily and quietly. The red sparks fly ever from the wood-fed engine, the night passes and the dawn grows pink and grey over Russia.

And what do you see? Why, heather! Miles upon miles of the lavender-pink ling, faithfully making carpet as ever for the silver birches and the Scotch firs, whose feet, seemingly, are not at ease beneath any other rug — Scotch firs, spruces, the Austrian Christmas-tree, silver birch, low-growing alder, and that shrubby tree I know only as '* Scotch mahogany." It grows here by loch sides, as in Scotland, where it makes your fingers pink when you cut a switch of it to string five meagre, peaty trout upon. There is hardly a sign of life. Little grey wood-shingled cottages, the house not to be known from the stable; little scrappy patches of oats, very short in the straw and very poor in the ear; the occasional huddled figure of a peasant moving slowly in the walce of some saddened beast. Here, in these Baltic provinces, is not the wealth of Russia — neither the industrial nor the agricultural sphere of activity I have come to see. Here is landscape, simple, vast, unalterable landscape — not country malleable to the touch of ambitious or covetous humaaity. A crop, when there is one, rises bleakly, half-heartedly, from the sparse soil. Earth is grim, and has no heart to laugh with produce. To him who deplaces the heather and lops its guardian fir-tree little good comes, as we know, and small increase. In these vast moorland and water-sodden spaces — for there is water, yes, and bulrushes and dabchicks, too — there is no joy of life. The moorland, with its melancholy, wistful smile, is suited rather to death and her sables. See — as we speak, in the middle of the moor, upon some poor trodden pathway, apparently a funeral train! Some disheartened peasant, who has laid by his futile mattock, quitted the crazy plough, dropped the blunted sickle. Black figures, in close procession, in the grey, cold hour of morning, hooded and shrouded in humble weeds. How it fills out the picture; how it accords with the minor scale ; how entirely it is approved by the imagination ! It is the right thing, the only thing one knows, to suit with this Russian moorland, where life is not encouraged, where death is all at home. It is — well, possibly it

ST. PETERSBURG AND THE WAY THERE 7

might be many more things, but we must stay our reflections, for a sapient member of the party has pointed out that it is not a funeral procession at all, but a row of peat-stacks — native to the moorland, too.

And what else do we see? Every mile or two enormous heaps of pine-wood and silver birch, cut in blocks a foot long, and laid with marvellous precision — acres and acres of this cheapest and costliest of fuels — cheapest because its price is but the blow of an axe, costliest because it leaves sterility, famine, and flood behind it. Each station is ramparted around with these wood-stacks, each river we cross is choked with huge barges carrying it away. And whenever the train stops we see, moving silently behind the crowd of uniforms, the peasants of Bulgaria and Servia and Austrian Poland — the same poverty, the same sackcloth and sheepskins, the same rope shoes, the same loaf of black bread. They prove the existence of a tie one did not suspect between the Balkan countries which Russia loves and which do not always love her. We see Vilna, where one June Napoleon entered in triumph, and whence one December he fled from his own army, leaving 20,000 sick and five millions of francs behind; and where the last Polish revolution died when its leaders w^ere executed. We see Pskov, where Europe first touched hands with what has since become Russia, where the Duke of Moscow destroyed a republic, where Ivan the Terrible fled from an idiot saint, where Gustavus Adolphus with his army knocked at the walls in vain, where Peter the Great kept his cannons and his powder. And we see Gatchina, one of the summer residences of the Imperial Family, and where the best trout come from. Then, almost wdthout transition of suburbs, the train draws up in a plain, lead-coloured station, and we are in the city wdiich the great Tsar Peter built in the waters of the Neva and named after himself.

It is a remarkable railway journey — from Charing Cross to St. Petersburg in fifty hours, with only one change of carriage where the gauge changes, with bed and board of the best, with never a single stop of more than five minutes, and such punctuality that, due at St. Petersburg at 2.45, the station clock is striking three as we drive with our luggage out of the yard. This journey is one of many such owed by travellers to the enterprise which makes this imposing cross upon the map — from Calais to Constantinople, and from Gibraltar to Irkutsk.

A iroika dashes down the Nevski Prospect, the horse in the shafts trotting desperately, the others galloping on either side, their heads bent outward. Over the housetops rise the five bulbous domes, like inverted balloons, that crown the church now standing where Alexander II. fell. At the corner of the great bazaar is a little votive chapel to the saint who caused people to subscribe so liberally to rebuild the bazaar when it was burned, and as they pass, the well-to-do cross themselves and the poor dof¥ their caps. All these are incongruities. They look as odd as a leather bottel would amid silver and cut-glass. They are bits of real Russia — St. Petersburg is a foreign city, and a hybrid one to boot. Any quarter of it would be at home in Paris or Potsdam or Pesth. Peter the Great built it in the Neva swamps as ^' a window toward Europe," in Algarotti's memorable phrase; and that is precisely what it remains. For a long time every educated Russian wished to make his country like western Europe; he resented above all things being called uncivilised, and civilisation meant to him French architecture and English manners. St. Petersburg is the embodiment of this wish. Provincial Russians still hugely admire their capital, but if it were to be rebuilt now it would resemble Moscow and not Milan. The fashion of imitating the West has passed; to-day to be patriotic is to be Russian, and so far from following the mode of the outside world, to wait confidently till the outside world shall learn that the Russian mode is better and shall lay aside its heathenism, its parliamentarianism, its socialism, the license it calls lib-

CATHEDRAL OF ST. ISAAC, ST. PETERSBURG.

erty, and all its other wickednesses, and walk in the only path of religious truth and social security. So to the Russian, St. Petersburg is no longer Russia, while to the visitor it is cosmopolitan and therefore, as a whole, uninteresting.

I say, as a whole, for the city of Peter the Great and all his successors cannot fail to contain many things to arrest the attention. Its churches, for example, are the most splendid of any modern churches in the world — indeed their costliness is in curious contrast with their modernity. In other countries cathedrals are magnificent through the faith and the munificence of men of old time; here our contemporaries have set their creed in gold and gems. St. Isaac's Cathedral, from whose magnificent dome the best view of the city is obtained, whose gloom hides untold wealth upon its altars, whose colossal steps are each formed of a single stone, whose four sides of great granite monoliths are unsurpassed, and whose pillars of malachite and lapis lazuli are unapproached elsewhere, was consecrated the year in which I was born. A semicircular colonnade leads from the Nevski to the cathedral of our wonder-working Lady of Kazan, where the name of the Almighty blazes in diamonds, where half a ton of silver marks an outburst of Cossack piety, where pearls and sapphires seem to have no value, so lavishly are they strewed, and it dates from 181 1. Wealth in Russia seems to pour itself toward the habitation and the decoration of religion. Any reason suffices for a new church. Of course, where Alexander II. fell a superb church is rising, and its dazzling group of blue and green and white and gold cupolas is visible from every part of the city. In its centre are the very paving-stones upon which he fell, and the soil stained with his blood. Such a solemn memorial is natural and inevitable, but a fire at the market, and a generous popular subscription to rebuild it, is excuse for a highly decorated little chapel on the Nevski itself, before which innumerable passers stop and pray, diverting the traffic like a boulder in a stream.

lo ALL THE RUSSIAS

One church only, meagrely endowed in comparison with the rest, is profoundly rich in association. A spire like a needle rises almost from the Neva, and at its base are the heavy casemates where the water laps drearily forever at inscrutable dungeons behind — church and the dungeons aUke dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul. The citadel is upon an island, where Peter's generals first camped, and which he found good and made the focus of the city to be. Upon it is his cottage, a log-house of four rooms, now carefully protected by another structure built over and around it. Here is his dining-room, his reception-room, his dark little bedroom, the very chair in which he sat, the very objects he made. You. see nothing of the prison of which you have heard so much, except its walls upon the river and its dark water-gate, for as you drive to the cathedral through the landgate the modern mint is before you, the church to your right, and a long row of single-storey barracks to your left. And it is useless to ask questions. Very few people know what passes within, and these few never open their lips. But the horror has departed from this place, for nowadays prisoners of State are carried to the fortress of Schliisselburg, also an island in the Neva, forty miles away. Concerning this prison absolute secrecy prevails. I made the acquaintance of an intimate relation of the Governor, and he assured me that never in the closest family talk had he ever heard a syllable concerning it. So far as silence goes, it is indeed a living grave, the stony replica of the closed lips of autocracy. But all the world may drive through the low red-brick gate of the citadel to the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, and gaze through its narrow gloom upon all the mouldering flags of conquered enemies and all the rusting keys of surrendered towns. These are but poor things, however, to what lies below them — the long rows of square white marble tombs, where, each under the same gilt cross and with nothing but a name to mark the difference, repose forever all the Tsars, save one, of all the Russias, since Tsars and Russia were.