Every one of the towers of this chiu-ch tliffers from the other in size and proportion, in shape and ornament. The whole is far from forming a whole ; no main building is discoverable in this architectural maze ; in every one of these hollow irregularities lurks a separate church, in every excrescence a chapel ; or they may be likened to chimneys expanded to temples. One of the towers stands forth prominently amid the coiLfusion, yet it is not in the centre, for there is in fact neither centre nor side, neither beginning nor end ; it is all here and there. Strictly speaking, what I have just called a tower is no tower at all, but a church and the chief one in the knot of churches ; the Church of the Protection of Holy Mary, properly so called. This tower, 150 feet in height, is quite hollow within, having no division of any kind, and lessening by degrees to the summit, from whose small cupola the portrait of the " protecting Mother Mary" looks down as if from heaven. This tower or church sits as it were upon the neck of another, hollowed out beneath it like the passage of a mine, from whose sides a immber of chapels are sprouting : Palm Sunday Chapel, the Chapel of the three Patriarchs, of Alexander Svirskoi, and whatever else their names may be. Service is performed in these one day in the year only, all the rest of the time they are closed. The greater part are so filled up with sacred utensils and objects of adoration that there is liardly any room left for the pious who come to pray. Some have a kind of cupola that looks exactly Hke a turban, as if they were so many Turks' heads, from which Ivan had scooped the Mohammedan brains, and supplied their place with Christian furniture. Some of the stones of the cupolas are cut.on the sides, others not ; some are three-sided, some four-sided ; the sides are sometimes smooth ; some are ribbed, or fluted ; some of the flutes are perpendicular, and some wind in spiral lines round the cupola. To render the kaleidoscope appearance yet more perfect, every rib and every side is painted of a difilerent colour. Those neither cut in sides, nor ribbed, are scaled with little smooth, glazed, and painted bricks ; and, when these scales are closely examined, they even are seen to differ from one another ; some are oval, others cut like leaves. The greater part of the cupola-crowned towers have a round body, but not all ; there are six-sided and eightsided towers. In short, when from one of the upper galleries we look down on all the jagged and pointed confusion, we are inclined to believe we are gazing on a field of giant thistles, some half and some fidly blown, that have sprung from antediluvian seed, and been changed to stone by the stroke of an enchanter.
To the lower churches the entrances are on the ground-floor. Between these entrances, from remote times, wax-taper sellers have established themselves, and there they display their gilded and many-coloured wares. From one corner we ascend to the upper churches, bv a broad covered flight of steps, which beside a multitude of dead fir-trees is beset day and night with the living ones, customary in such places ; namely, by hungry
beg'gars who look to be fed by the devout. These steps lead to a gallery or landing-place which branches off right and left to a labyrinth of passages leaduig to the separate doors of the temple on the roof. These passages are so narrow and winding, that it costs many a painful effort to work one's way through. In some parts they are convenient enough, and even expand into spacious terraces. Where they lead outwards they are of course covered, and their roofs are supported by pillars of different forms and sizes. Whole flocks of half-wild pigeons that build their nests here, are constantly flying in and out. Imagine then all these points and pinnacles sunnounted by crescents, and by very profusely-carved crosses, fancifully wreathed with gilded chains ; imagine further, with how manyvarious patterns of arabesques, every wall and passage is painted ; how from painted flower-pots, gigantic thistles, flowers and shi-ubs spring forth, vary into vine-wreaths, wind and twist further till they end in simple lines and knots ; imagine the now somewhat faded colours, red, blue, green, gold, silver, all fresh and gaudy, and you may in some degree comprehend how these buildings must have dehghted the eye of so original a tyrant as Ivan the Terrible.
" I know not whether it be beautiful in your opinion, but we think it very beautiful ; it is so rich, bold and magnificent, it is so distinguished, so various, and so ornamented," said the Russian pope, who was my guide ; and thereupon he fell to pronoimcing a panegyric on the church and its architect, such as Ivan himself may have pronounced before he put out the architect's eyes.
IVERSKAYA BOSHIA MATER, THE CHAPEL OF THE IBERIAN MOTHER OF GOD.