CHAPTER XXIX.

PALACE AND INSTITUTIONS OF MOSCOW.

IF you are weary reading of royal palaces, you will be sorry to be invited to the one more gorgeously adorned and illustrated than any other which you and I have entered in company. You have often heard of, and perhaps have seen, some specimens of barbaric splendor! You have associated with the word _barbaric_, ideas of Oriental and excessive magnificence, laid on without the more refined and chastened taste of modern civilization. It is a word the old Romans used to define _foreign people_, and whatever came to Rome from foreign parts: all the world was barbarous or Roman. We do not use the word in the same sense as barbarous. But with it, in connection with gold and pearls and decorations of the palace, we associate a wealth of luxury and brilliancy of ornamentation, that would suit the meridian of Persia rather than of Paris.

Not having seen the palaces of the interior of Asia, I cannot draw a comparison between them and the royal residences of European monarchs. But we are now on the border between the East and the West, between Asia and Europe, between barbarism in its best estate and civilization. Take a map of the world and see where Moscow stands! What vast, uncultured, desolate regions lie at the east of it, and still further on, what empires and peoples that make up the bulk of the human race! Out of the barbarism of that eastern portion of the earth’s plane, Russia is emerging, and Moscow is her frontier town; a wall and a monument: a sign and guide, signifying what Russia has been, and leading on to something higher and better, though the future is still in the depths of political and moral uncertainties.

The Tartar hordes have in ages past been fond of making raids upon Moscow, and leaving her palaces heaps of smoking ruins. In old times the Russians built them of wood for the most part, though one of stone erected in 1484 is still standing. Then the Czars removed the capital to St. Petersburg, and for a long time the Kremlin was without a palace or an emperor. The celebrated Empress Anne gave Moscow a palace, and her presence now and then, and Catharine II. designed a royal residence so vast and gorgeous as to rival the palaces of the world, but it was never finished; its model is preserved as a curiosity in the treasury. What she did build, the French wantonly burned when they were compelled to desert the city which its own inhabitants had consigned to destruction. This house, at the doors of which we have been standing while I have given you these historical facts, is the work of the late Nicholas, and is only about twenty years old. It has no likeness in the various orders of architecture; there is no correspondence or harmony between the within and without of it: yet the whole interior is a blaze of gold and upholstery that leaves all rules of taste and art out of the question. We pass through the Empress’s drawing-room, hung with white silk, her cabinet in crimson, her dressing and bath rooms with malachite mantels and priceless ornaments; the Emperor’s cabinet, with magnificent paintings of the proud French coming into Moscow, and the poor French skulking out,—grim satires these on the horrors and fortunes of war; the state apartments, with huge crystal vases at the entrance; the Hall of St. George, with the names of regiments and soldiers inscribed in gold upon the walls, who have been decorated with this order for bravery on the field; the Hall of St. Andrew, hung with blue silk, and inscribed with the names of heroes; the Emperor’s throne, more ostentatious and imposing than any other in Europe; the audience-chamber and banqueting-room, on which is lavished the last resource of gilt and paint to make a show,—and yet when we are ushered into the Gold Court, all former magnificence is for the moment forgotten in the dazzling splendor that fills the place, as if the walls were blazing with living golden light. A flight of steps at one end of the room, called “the red stair case,” is never trodden upon but when the Emperor, on the greatest of all occasions, goes to the Cathedral of the Assumption. This is part of the old palace begun by Catharine, and has a history running back to the time when John the Terrible stood here and saw the comet that he construed into an omen of his doom. And up this flight of stairs came Napoleon, the greatest of actors, when he took possession of the palace of the Kremlin. And when he went down these stairs he began that descent which never stopped till he touched the bottom of his tomb.

The right wing of the palace is the treasury building, with the most remarkable collection of objects to be seen in Russia. The Tower of London illustrates England as this museum tells the history of the Russian empire. Her past and present intercourse with the Asiatic nations, and her more modern commercial relations with the West, have made Moscow the emporium of all that distinguishes her ancient and modern commerce, and exchange of presents when treaties have been made. What riches of plate, jewels, silks, manufactures, which China, India, Persia, Armenia, and other powers, peoples, and tribes have poured into the lap of this colossal power in the progress of centuries! When the French were coming, the prudent Russians, foreseeing the evil, removed these pearls and diamonds and rubies, these vessels of gold and silver, these costly fabrics of art and toil which could never be replaced, and concealed them far in the interior, where the feet of the enemy would not be apt to follow them.

Among the historical curiosities here preserved with religious care, the traveller from the land of liberty views with sorrow and indignation the throne of Poland! Other thrones, as trophies of conquered kingdoms, stand near. One of ivory was brought from Constantinople in 1472. Another is from Persia, taken as long ago as 1660. It is covered with 876 diamonds, 1,223 rubies, and many other precious stones. Blazing in front of these thrones is an orb, which the Greek emperors, Basilius and Constantine, sent to Wladimir Monomachus, Prince of Kief, with a piece of the true cross! This orb is adorned with fifty-eight diamonds, eighty-nine rubies, twenty-three sapphires, fifty emeralds, and thirty-seven other stones, and with enamels colored in the highest style of Grecian art, to tell the story of King David, of the land of Israel.

One of the most wonderful institutions of Moscow is the hospital for foundlings, into which about twelve thousand children are taken yearly. As many, if not more, are received into a similar institution in St. Petersburg. It is said that no cities in the world surpass those of Russia in the comforts provided for the care of these outcasts from the birth, the most forlorn and helpless of all the objects that appeal to human sympathy. The government makes a yearly grant of about a million of dollars to this hospital in Moscow, and it has large resources besides, so that there is no lack of funds to meet the wants of these unfortunate little people, whose fathers and mothers forsaking them are taken up by the Lord.

In some cities I have seen a table made to revolve outside the walls of the asylum, and in, so that a child could be placed upon it outside, and on the door-bell being rung the table would be set in motion, and the infant is gently rolled into the house. The mother or friend who brought the child and laid it upon the table would thus be relieved of its charge, and would silently depart, leaving the child, yet utterly unseen and unknown. This system has its advantages, and many attendant evils. But here in Moscow they affect no such mystery about the matter. The hospital receives the infant children of poor and honest parents who are willing to give their babes to the state, and it also takes the offspring of sin and shame who are brought by their mothers or left on the highway and picked up by the police or the wayfarer. A reception-room is always open. A man or woman enters with a babe. No question is asked but these:—

“Has the child been baptized?”

If yes, “By what name?” If it has not been baptized, that sacrament is at once administered, and the name given is registered opposite a number, which is hereafter worn as a sign around its neck, and this number is handed to the person who brings the child. This number entitles the bearer to come back any time within ten years and claim the child. The nurses are mothers who have left their own children in the country, and come here to get the wages and living in the hospital, which are far better than they enjoy at home. And some of the nurses are the mothers whose children are here, and as they have the number that marks their own, they can easily change about till they get the care of the babe they seek to watch, without its ever being known to be theirs.

Nothing is now wanting that medical skill and good nursing can supply to preserve the lives of these orphans. We go from ward to ward, admiring the cleanliness, order, and comfort on every side. The babes are bathed in copper tubs, convenient in shape, and lined with thick flannel. They are not laid on the hard knees or sharp hoops of unfeeling nurses to be dressed, but they are suffered to lie on pillows of down while this operation is performed. After four weeks of such tender care, and when the child may be supposed to have gained some strength, they are sent with their nurses into the country. They are, however, exposed to such a climate, and the fare of the peasantry is so coarse, that it takes a tough child to weather the first year of life, and at least one-half of them die before they are twelve months old. Half of the remainder who survive the year fall by the way before they grow up; and so it comes to pass that only one quarter, twenty-five out of a hundred, of these children of the state live to be men and women. This is a small proportion, and it is quite likely that full as many of them would have lived to grow up, if there had been no hospital to care for them.

Another institute we find here in Moscow that has nothing to match it, and cannot have in our democratic country. The female orphan children of servants of the Emperor are taken into it, and eight hundred are constantly receiving an education to fit them for being teachers! They are bound to devote six years after they leave the institute to the business of teaching in the interior of the empire. They have a small salary, and thus provide for themselves while they are doing a good work for the state. No foundlings are admitted into this house. The orphans are all supposed to be children of honest parents, and this supposition keeps up a higher tone of self-respect than would be possible among a thousand children who did not know who their parents are.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing we have read of in the figure language of the Bible, but men in sheep’s clothing I had never seen till I met them to-day, in midsummer, in the market-places of Moscow. They could have but one suit of clothing, and to cover their nakedness must wear it summer and winter. It was made, “coat and pants,” of sheepskin with the wool on, and was worn by some with the wool outside, and by others with the wool in. On a day like this of sweltering heat, when it was not safe for us to walk in the sun without parasols, these natives of the north, with their winter clothes on, were not apparently oppressed; and it was a comfort to believe that they had become accustomed to it, and had no idea of any thing more enjoyable than an indefinite degree of heat.

As winter is the _longer half_ of the year, it is the _harvest_ time for those who are in the line of buying and selling meats and all provisions that are preserved by frost. As soon as the cold weather fairly sets in, the fatted cattle and pigs and poultry are doomed to die by the hands of the butcher. The carcasses are instantly frozen and sent to market. Here it is packed up in enormous heaps, and families who are able to buy at wholesale prices lay in their winter supplies, and those who live from hand to mouth can buy at any time fresh meat that was killed in the fall. The weather is so uniformly cold that little danger of a thaw is apprehended, but if it comes, away goes the meat. And it must at any time be cooked immediately on thawing, so that it is rather a precarious mode of preserving provisions. But it is adapted to the country and climate, it saves packing and salting, and has the advantage of furnishing fresh meat, at moderate prices, at all times. The fish from the White Sea are also kept, like wood-piles, in heaps with oxen and sheep and deer. The flesh of mammoths and elephants of past ages has been found in perfect preservation in the icy regions of the north, and it is certainly one of the remarkable _provisions_ of nature that cold, which is so destructive of animal life, should also be the preserver of flesh, for indefinite periods, after the life principle has been extinguished.

The Jews in Chatham Street, New York, who press their wares upon the notice of passers by, are modest compared with the vendors of old clothes and miscellaneous matters in the markets of Moscow. It was hard to get away from them without making an investment in the most undesirable of all worldly goods,—a coat that somebody else had cast off. And such a jumble of things! reminding one of the sign on the country store window-shutter of an alliterative dealer: “Bibles, Blackball, Butter, Testaments, Tar, Treacle, Godly-books, and Gimlets, for sale here.” Ironware, pot-metal, in the shape of utensils for cooking, seemed to abound; and if the poorer people, who are the buyers here, have any thing to cook, it is very pleasant to know it. Their food is mainly milk, eggs, pickles, cabbage, and black bread, with beef and mutton according to their ability to buy it. As a general thing the Russian peasants are not underfed; the land being so largely in the immediate care of the laborer himself, he can manage to get food for himself and family. And as they clothe themselves in the rudest and most primitive way, literally using skins of beasts, and in their natural state, they ought to be able to live comfortably without handling much money.

The “Riding School” of Moscow is the building in which a remarkable museum is gathered. This building is one of the longest with an unbroken area in the world, the roof, without a column to support it, covering a space 560 feet long and 160 wide. It is constructed on this enormous scale for the exercise of regiments, cavalry and foot, in winter, when the weather is so severe as to render drills out of doors impossible. The Ethnological Society of the North of Europe had selected this place—and it was my good fortune to be here at the time—for the exhibition of the Slavonic races in wax! Here they are in all their varied employments, according to the climate, habits, and necessities of the several peoples; with their actual surroundings of forest, ice, snow, sea, river; the men, women, and children, with dogs, poultry, oxen, reindeer, and sledges, hunting and fishing, freezing and trying to keep warm, marrying and trading and travelling; here are Albanian costumes, and there a cavern and human skeletons sitting in it, telling a story I could not understand, and here a cottage out of whose roof the smoke curls gracefully, and the open door and chickens and children playing near, need no interpreter to speak of comfort and content.

If one were writing a volume of the manners and customs of the Slavonic races, he would learn more of them by the study of this museum than in months of travel among the people. The society is composed of learned and thoughtful men of Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, &c., who meet annually for the collection and diffusion of useful knowledge on the subject of their own race specially and the family of man. We are very apt to think that, outside of our own English-speaking countries, there is little doing to promote the civilization and thus the happiness of the human race. Travel takes this and many other conceits out of a man. One of the first things he learns, if he is capable of learning any thing, is that he knows very little of what is going on in the world. Then he finds that people whom he thought slow and only half civilized are far ahead of him in many things, and by degrees he comes to the conclusion that there is much in the world to be learned that he had never dreamed of. But if he sticks to it that what he does not know is not worth knowing, like my fellow countryman who insists that there is more art in Illinois than in all Europe, then you may be sure that he answers to the cane shown to Sydney Smith by one of this sort of travellers who said:

“This stick, sir, has been all around the world, sir.”

“Is it possible,” replied Mr. Smith, “why it’s nothing but a stick for all that!”