In the last hall, most splendid horse trappings are shown, mostly presents from Turkish sultans, on whom Russia has of late imposed so many bridles and chains, that the idea may have suggested itself to them, of returning the presents in kind. The whole are splendidly adorned nth precious stones, saddle, as well as bit and bridle. In the lowest story there is a large collection of singular-looking old carnages, which one cannot look at without a feeling of joy that they are at last resting In peace, for most fearful and nerve-shattering must the clatter have been when those ma:sivc wheels rumbled along, and all that timber gi'oaned and shrieked. Some of them had whole fir trees for their axles, and seemed destined to be dragged by the whole nation to bear their idols about from place to place. Another giant birth, or rather embryo, for. it never arrived at development, was the model of an enormous palace, designed to have been built on the Kremlin hill, by Catherine. Every thing, with the exception of some old churches, was to have been levelled with the ground, and one giant palace to replace them. Fortunately for the lovers of antiquity, and to the joy of all Russian patriots, the plan was, I know not why, never carried into execution.
The arsenal contains a magazine of weapons sufficient to arm a hundred thousand men. When I visited it, I found a non-commissioned officer busied in patching a flag of Peter the Great, which had lain here in a tattered condition since the year 1812. The spoils of Pugatsheff were the only antiquities 1 found here. This rebellious Cossack once terrified the Russian empire with cannon, at which Russian children would now laugh. They are nothing more than clumsy iron tubes, and the coarse seam of the joining is yet visible. The flag carried before this plunderer from the Caspian is worthy of the cannon. It is a coarse sackcloth, with a Madonna painted on it. This rag was fastened to a staff" on which no more art was expended than on a hop-pole It probably possessed a kind of sanctity, for a breach in the centre was carefully repaired with an iron ring. In many corners of the arsenal the Polish eagle droops its pinions. The weapons are mostly of Tula manufwctmc. In a press are kept specimens of the muskets of other nations, English, French, and others, by which to test the advance of Russian skill. A Russian musket from Tula costs about eighteen francs, half as much as an English one at cost price in England itself, but they are very inferior to the English. They are apt to burst in a discharge.
In Moscow there are of course markets in every corner of the city, but its chief commerce centres in Kitai-Gorod, the centre of the whole, where stands the gostinnoi dvcr (bazaar) and the Ryiidi (rows of shops).
The gostinnoi dvor of Moscow is, after that of the fair of Nishney Novgorod, the largest in Russia. It is a colossal building of three stories; three rows of pillars and three rows of shops stand, one above another, connected together by countless passages and steps. Beneath is the greatest crowd, above, the greatest commerce. In these courts and galleries, from year's end to year's end, is the greatest standing warehouse of the empire, and a continual fair. Hither, from the Black Sea, streams all that the Levant can produce ; from the Baltic, the produce of Western Europe; from Siberia, what China and Tartary yield. Moscow is the centre of the whole interior traffic of Russia. Along the galleries longbearded Russians and black-robed Persians, with their pointed sheepskin caps, were roaming about; silken-clad Bokharians rustled by, and Tartars and Greeks sat on the balustrades reckoning their gains. The gostinnoi dvor has magazines and shops for the most considerable merchants of
Moscow, who trade here wholesale only, and are more than nine hundred in number.
The number of shops m the Ryadi are not less than twelve hundred; all united under one common roof. Not only the shops, but the passages between, are covered, but the roof is so awkwardly constructed, that in the strongest sunshine people stumble in darkness, and after the shghtest shower wade through mud.