The various buildings of the Kremlin lie scattered in very picturesque disorder, so that there i? nowhere space for a regularly formed open place among them. The most regular is the Senate Place, with the arsenal to the right, the Senate House to the left, and on the south side the Oruslieinaya Palata (the palace of arms). In this spot, fettered by their own weight, and condemned to eternal silence, lie prisoners from all parts of Europe ; namely, the cannon with which the invading people of the west strewed the road of Smolensk in 1812. The cannon are ranged in long rows with small shields erected on staves to indicate to what nation they belonged ; as PoHsh cannon, so many ; Westphalian, so many ; — the sight of these will hurt no one's feelings, as the state has ceased to exist. Dutch so many ; few Mynheers wander as far as Moscow to be pained at the view. The Bavarian cannon are handsome, new, and bright ; nor are Prussian wanting ; and of French there are enough to stock an arsenal. The only nation of which no representatives ai'e to be found here is the
220 THE ORUSIIEINAYA PALATA.
English ; I know not that Russia possesses anywhere an EngliiJi trophy.
In the vestibule of the palace are ranged another kind of prisoners ; a whole collection of busts of noble Poles ; the quiet memorials of very unquiet gentlemen, mostly of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, finely executed, and evident likenesses. The collection was brought from Warsaw. It is a striking fact that Russia is compelled to decorate her public buildings with the portraits of foreigners, and as yet possesses no such collection of her own celebrated men. However, people hurry past these interesting portraits to view the regaha in the upper floors.
The crowns are very advantageously placed, each on an elegant tripod an ell and a half in height, where they repose, on a cushion of velvet embroidered with gold, under a glass bell. Among the thrones placed here, some are very interesting, and the greater part very costly. The tlirone sent to Boris Godunoff, in 1606, is a solid mass of wood plated over with gold, so that it has the appearance of massive metal. In the gold, many large and beautiful turquoises are set, and here and there an oriental pearl. The throne of Ivan Vassilievitsch is of ivory ; it may have had a fine effect when new and fresh, but it is now gray and discoloured ; that of Alexis Michailovitsh is of massive silver. The tlirone of Peter the Great and his brother Ivan is the largest and ugliest of all ; it looks as if the churchstool of a counsellor in some old German imperial city had served for the model. Behind the throne is a curtain, and behind the curtain, in the back that supports the canopy, there is an opening where their sister Sophia used to sit when her brothers gave audience, that she might whisper to them the answers she thought fitting. The thrones of the later emperors are more tasteful, but scarcely more costly than the chair of an American president ; simple chairs of antique form under canopies of crimson velvet. The Pohsh throne used by the present emperor in Warsaw is likewise here.
Sceptres and balls are here in abundance. I found none more interesting than the broken sceptre of the kings of Poland, broken not metaphorically only, but literally. The Polish sceptre is a long greenish stone, set in gold at the extremities ; the stone was broken diagonally in the middle, and the two pieces lay side by side. I thought this so remai-kable, that I asked the director of the collection, who had the goodness to receive me, about this fracture. He had never noticed it, and knew nothing about it. A person who was viewing them with me merely remai'ked C^est un hasard Men drole.
In the hall of warlike trophies, none is more interesting than the litter in Avhich Charles XII. was borne from the battle of Pultava. Voltaire says that it was shattered by a ball ; but it has been so well patched and repaired, that no traces of injury are to be seen. It would have been more interesting if it had remained as the Russian balls had left it.