The Tver Boulevards, surromiding the Bclol Gorod, are not unpleasing, though less agreeable than the Alexander garden. They are bjoad walks laid out with trees, shi-ubs, and parterres, far more rural and pleasing than the formal lime avenues of Berlin, and they will be much handsomer some time hence, for at present the plantations are very young. The different boulevards round Beloi Gorod have an extent of seven versts, or about a German mile.
Moscow, with its labyrinth of com^ts, shrubberies, and gardens, and with streets that nowhere take the direct business-like course, has throughout the character of a suburb or vUlage. This is more particularly the case round Sendanoi Gorod. The houses do not stand in straight rows like soldiers, nor are they all of similar height and dimensions ; one house will be large and magnificent, another small and paltry ; one is painted white, another green, a third yellow. One stands boldly forward, seeking notice, another retreats within its little garden or stately courtyard, in wliicli coaches -and-four arc constantly circling. A city, in one sense of the word, that is, an assemblage of human dwellings pressed closely together, till they seem as if hewn out of one rock, Moscow is not, excepting perhaps the square verst contained in the KremUn and Kltai Gorod.
The breadth of Garden -street and its continuations is imposing, and embraces the city in a circuit of nearly two German miles. In some parts, the houses are thickly planted ; In othei-s, the gardens lie In the middle of the road, with paths on either side. In some, the remains of the city-ditch ai'e laid out in walks and flower-beds ; in others, the slope of the wall is adorned hi a similar manner. The road is sonietimes up hill, sometinies down, passing througli the bottom of a valley, or rising to a height that connnands a view of the gold-crowned Kremlin and of the hundred parishes of Moscow with their numerous churches. On tlie one side, roofs and cupolas gleam to the extreme verge of the horizon ; on the other, we behold the suburbs with their villas, meadows, and woods, and get an occasional glimpse beyond the encircling wall of earth over the wide uncultivated " Black field," where the winds and powers of nature revel free and uncontrolled. On the road that divides the city fiom the suburbs, some markets are held ; the city and the environs meet here as on neutral ground to exchange commodities ; the former brings furniture, household utensils, porcelain, salt, &c. ; the latter, flour and garden produce. The streets radiating from the centre here pour forth their streams of life, and from the suburbs, country people press into the heart of the city. The •weakest part of Moscow is its rivers. The two chief rivers are the Moskva and the Yausa. The former winds so much that it remains for nearly three miles within the limits of the city. Both are extremely shah low. The Moskva is a meagre nymph, whose proportions become no fuller after she has swallowed up her sister the Yausa, which, in summer, drags heavily along its slimy bed. How different from the beautifid incomparable Neva, with its constantly full bosom and smiHng face, moving in inexhaustible abundance past its majestic granite quays ! The Moskva ■wants this girdle of quays, and its banks are everywhere in bad condition. Indirectly, however, these rivers yield the city its finest ornament, if we consider the trees in the moist green valleys, and the gardens on the hill side, as their work. Besides these, Moscow has some other small rivers, of which some, the Ruibenka, for example, begins and ends its course within her walls ; and the Neglinya and Tshetshoca do nearly the same. Although but a few versts in length, these rivers, flowing through the classic ground of so populous a city, have, in an historical as in a nationaleconomic point of view, far more interest than many greater streams that pour their waters for hundreds of miles through a wUdemess.
What the Acropolis was to Athens, and the Capitol to Rome, the Kremlin is to Moscow. The quarter of the Forum Romanum and the Mons Palatinus in Rome answer nearly to the Kremlin and Kitai Gorod in Moscow. Here, as there, the three cliief powders of society have their seat, the political, the spiritual, and the commercial.