at a later period, when more intimate connection with China had improved and, in some places, domesticated the habits of these previously houseless vagrants, they might possibly have made themselves the means of transmitting westward the arts and among the rest the architecture of that celestial empire. In point of fact, however, it does not appear that they ever did so. No essential resemblance is to be traced between the usual domes of a Russian church and the roof with which every one is conversant in the representations of Chinese buildings. Indeed, the principles upon which they are designed appear to be altogether dissimilar; the tentlike coverings and pinnacles of the latter being characterized by external concavity, and betraying no rudiments of that bulging convexity so remarkable in the cupolas of Russia. But in hesitating to admit, as has hitherto been usual, the Tartarian introduc tion of this peculiar decoration, we are not aware, we must confess, of any other foreign source whence its origin may more probably be derived. Greece, as we have seen, is out of the question; and though it seems to occur not uncommonly in the architecture of India and of Egypt, at no period has the intercourse of the Russians with those countries been such as to justify a belief, that they could have borrowed any ornaments of building from regions so alien and remote.*-The cupolas of Novgorod, though pre cisely of this form, throw no satisfactory light on the antiquity of the fashion, as it is difficult to suppose them coeval with the original church, or more ancient than the fire of 1340. The irruption of the Tartars in the early part of the thirteenth century will account for the disappearance of the numerous cathedrals, with which we know that Russia had previously been decorated. Of the sweeping desolation which accompanied that calamitous event, the fate of Kieff, before alluded to, may be taken as a sufficient specimen. This ancient capital, though but little known to our ancestors of western Europe, was still, if we are to believe contemporary authority, a city of no ordinary splendour. The Russian historians are unusually eloquent in their description of its white walls and brilliant cupolas, and of the numerous gardens, which, as is customary in the east, were mingled with the palaces of this æmula sceptri Constantinopolitani.' Ditmarus, a German chronicler of the eleventh century, informs us that it contained in his time no fewer than 400 churches. It may, indeed, be reasonably doubted whether all these places of worship could have exhibited any appearance of ornamental architecture. Many of them were * Even the Tartars appear to have had scarcely any intercourse with India before the era of Tamerlane, at which time their influence in Russia was nearly extinct. probably probably little more than public crosses. Still, the assertion of Ditmarus is sufficient to prove the existence of a very considerable metropolis before the arrival of the Tartar invaders, and how it was left by that people, may be learnt from the journal of Carpini,+ who, visiting the spot about six years after the siege, could find only 200 houses remaining. It was not until a century had nearly elapsed, during which almost all the cathedrals of Russia were materially defaced or reduced to utter ruin, that the church received its earliest protection from the Khans, in the year 1313, under the reign of the celebrated Usbeck. There exists a decree of that monarch expressly formed to regulate the relations between his Tartar subjects and their Christian dependants, by which it is declared a capital offence to blaspheme the Russian religion, and to profane a church, monastery or chapel. No country, ancient or modern, can vie with Russia in the ease and rapidity with which she can change her metropolis. Novgorod, Kieff, and Vladimir had each successively attained that rank before the publication of the edict in question; and Moscow, which at that time was fast rising in political importance, soon after succeeded to the transitory distinction of being esteemed the capital of the empire. This city seems very soon after its foundation to have possessed many churches of wood, and among the rest that dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, so long the cemetery of the Muscovite princes; but the earliest stone church of which it could boast was the cathedral founded in 1320 by Ivan I., and consecrated the following year in honour of the Assumption of the Virgin. Both this church and, that of St. Michael (which was re-constructed of brick by the same prince in 1333) were taken down in the course of a subsequent reign and replaced by more modern structures; we may still, however, estimate the quality of their architecture, from that of the Church of the Transfiguration, which was also built by Ivan I., and, like the others, within the precincts of the Kremlin. This church, the oldest now existing in Moscow, though small in size, maintains a sort of family resemblance, in form and character, with that of Novgorod before described, and must unquestionably be referred to the same Greek model. As a specimen of art it is one of the most rude and unambitious which can possibly be conceived, being a heavy, though diminutive pile of brickwork, with no other decoration Of the kind mentioned by Turberville : Besides their private gods, in open places stand Their crosses, unto which they crouch and bless themselves with hand; Was never such deceit in rags and greasy garments found.-Hakluyt, ii. 305. + Hakluyt, i. 61. than than the usual dome, and remarkable only for its squat and dwarfish proportions. A considerable settlement having taken place in its first foundations, since the period of their construction, it has become the superstitious belief of the lower order of Russians, that this lapse is still regularly, though imperceptibly progressive, and will continue until the whole church shall have descended into the bowels of the earth. They conceive that when the surmounting cross shall have disappeared below the surface of the ground, the dissolution of the world will take place. In point of size and decoration, the Cathedral and the church of St. Michael were probably far more considerable buildings than that which we have just been describing; but that no greater knowledge of the essentials of the art was displayed by the contrivers of those edifices may be inferred from the dilapidated condition into which they had fallen before the end of the succeeding century, at which period the renewal of both was found to be indispensably necessary. The events which took place at this embarrassing juncture afford us no bad specimen of the low state of art in Russia about the year 1473, when she was recovering from the burthen of the Tartar yoke, and beginning to be influenced by the spirit of improvement. On former occasions it appears to have been usual, when the construction of a building of importance was contemplated, to apply at Constantinople for experienced architects, to whose skill the undertaking might be committed. When Moscow was in want of a cathedral, however, in 1473, the Greek Empire had ceased to exist; and the Russians, unaccustomed to look to any other foreign quarter for assistance in their architectural concerns, determined to confide the execution of the work to the less trustworthy hands of native artists. The foundation was accordingly laid in the presence of the court and clergy; and the progress of the building at first seemed to promise the most successful results. Already had the walls of the church attained to their intended height, and nothing was wanting but to close in the arches, which were destined to constitute the roof, when, unfortunately, this critical ' labor ultimus' proved more than the mastership of the Muscovites could manage, and, like the finishing card of a nursery castle, precipitated in a moment the whole building to the ground. This disappointment, however, though it discouraged for a time the development of national ingenuity, was by no means so unfavourable, as might have been expected, to the propagation of architecture in Russia, since it led to the employment of Italian artists and the consequent magnificence of the Kremlin. Ivan III., at that time Grand Duke, with some pretty strong soupçons of the savage, was, time and place considered, upon the whole an enlightened enlightened prince, and effected far more for the improvement of his country than any of his predecessors or successors, from Vladimir to Peter the Great. His attention was probably directed towards Italy by the suggestion of Sophia his wife, a Greek princess long resident at Rome; so that, being convinced by melancholy experience that the masonry of his Russians was but moderate, he resolved to dispatch an embassy to the republic of Venice, of which an essential, and, as M. Karamsin believes, the principal object was to procure, at any price, a good architect. The artist engaged by the ambassador was Alberti Aristoteli, a native of Bologna, a man of considerable reputation in his own country, and who had even been invited by Mahomet II. to superintend his alterations at Constantinople. It was probably for the purpose of making himself master of the necessary distribution of a Greek church (with which, as a Latin, he may be presumed to have been previously unacquainted) that Aristoteli made it his first business on arriving in Russia to visit the ancient cathedral at Vladimir, which, though sacked and ruined by the Tartars, was still considered by the Russians as a chef-d'œuvre of art. Returning to Moscow, he proceeded to lay the foundations of the present cathedral, which was begun in 1475, and being brought without accident to a happy completion, was consecrated by the Metropolitan on the 12th of August, 1479. Though the work of an Italian, it must not be supposed that this church has any great similarity to those of Italy. Some, indeed, of the ornaments of the exterior are such as may possibly have been borrowed from churches of the Lombard style, but even these (perhaps from their comparative paucity) bear an infinitely more striking resemblance to the works of our own Saxon and Norman ancestors. The arch of the great southern door in particular is like those which are usual in all our more ancient churches; the windows, as in them, are narrow, roundheaded loop-holes; and the range of small arches which runs round the building at a considerable height from the ground might even be mistaken for a Norman decoration. Notwithstanding the appearance, however, of a few of the details, the general character of the church is decidedly Graco-Russian. The Byzantine model, indeed, was probably prescribed to the artist, and accordingly, as at Novgorod, the ground-plan is nearly square, a small projection serves for the sanctuary, and the roof is supported by four large piers. The only essential improvement to be observed in this church, when compared with former architectural attempts in Russia, is the superiority of its general elevation, which allows a degree of loftiness to the interior, before unknown. Upon the whole, however, it must be confessed that, as as a work of so late an era as the fifteenth century and the great metropolitan temple of an (even at that time) considerable nation, this brick-built edifice is only calculated to excite astonishment from the primitive rudeness of its appearance, and, in point of real architectural merit, can never, with all its gilding, be brought to stand the slightest comparison with the contemporary structures of the West. was All the most remarkable buildings of the Kremlin were erected during the reign of Ivan III., or that of his successor Vassili. The walls and towers of that enclosure were constructed by two Italians, Marco and Pietro Antonio, between the years 1485 and 1492. The banqueting-chamber, which subsists at present, as described by Jenkinson in 1557, a fair great hall in the midst whereof is a pillar, four square, very artificially made,'* begun by Marco in 1487, and finished in 1491, by Pietro Antonio. The palace of the Tsars is the work of a Milanese named Aleviso, who began it in 1499, and finished it in 1508. The church of St. Michael was completed by the same architect in 1507. But the buildings of the Kremlin must not be considered in detail. Mean and insignificant as many of them are, if minutely and separately examined, the effect of the whole when seen from almost any point of view is, beyond conception, stately and picturesque. The strange and brilliant summits of so large an assemblage of churches, the contrast of bright colours with which many of them are painted, the curious architecture of the mural and other towers, and above all the palace of the Tsars, with its terraces, balconies, flights of steps and remarkable roof, unite to form a picture of more than ordinary richness and pomp; to which, indeed, we are by no means persuaded that all Europe can furnish a parallel, except perhaps on the shores of the Bosphorus. It will not be forgotten that this striking group of buildings, after having escaped destruction by fire, during the great conflagrations which ravaged Moscow in 1547, in 1571, and on the arrival of the French in 1812, was mined in two places by those insatiate marauders, on the eve of their memorable retreat. Fortunately no object of primary interest has suffered irreparable injury from the effects of this wanton explosion for which the obsolete military character of the Kremlin may have furnished a miserable pretext, but of which the real motives are no where to be found, but in the mischievous malignity of disappointment. Notwithstanding the troubles which distracted Russia during the long minority of Ivan IV., the love of church-building was carried to such an excess that the young monarch, soon after he *Purchas's Pilgrims, III. 242. assumed |