Moscow must also remain the centre of internal commerce, as this advantage does not depend upon the caprice of an individual will, but on geographical position. The manufactures of the city have increased greatly of late years, and it is so decidedly first in this respect that no other in the empire can bear even a distant comparison with it. Nearly 20,000 of its inhabitants owe their means of existence to this branch of human industry. Being, as it is, the chief seat of manufacture and internal commerce, Moscow has an important voice in the administration. Tliis voice it is true, is seldom loud, but it is listened to, and respected. The difference that exists in this respect between Moscow and St. Petersburg is sufficiently proved by the fact that the former has never had a German governor appointed over it, while St. Petersburg has usually foreign commanders. A native Russian is always selected for Moscow, because she will endure no other. The city even stands upon its dignity sometimes, takes something amiss, and asks an explanation, as if it had, like an English city, old privileges to guard. It is related that when on the occasion of the inundation in St. Petersburg, in 1824, the minister wrote to the citizens of Moscow, to call on them to advance money, he made use of some unsuitable expressions, of which an explanation was demanded before the supply was granted.
With reference to art, literature, and fashion, and all therewith connected, Moscow stands in relation to St. Petersburg much as the latter city does to Paris. As St. Petersburg hates and despises Paris, and yet follows Parisian fashions unconditionally, and awaits Avith impatience the coming of the first steamboat in spring that shall bring them, so does Moscow hold St. Petersburg in abhorrence, yet purchases of no milliner who does not write up " de Pctershourg,' and receives no artist with favour who has not previously been lauded there. After passing an exammation, and after having been approved of in St. Petersburg, his patent is ratified, and he may finish his tour with applause throughout the empire. I heard in Moscow a violinist, a Mr. H., who had been tolerated in Paris, and had in consequence been received with rapturous applause in St. Petersburg. Mr. H.'s fortune was now made for Russia, and he of whom no mortal had ever before heard any thing extraordinary, was all at once raised to the rank of a celebrated artist, who stood before the public of Moscow bashfully wondering at his own sudden fame, while praise, applause, and garlands were raining down in abundance on him ; his merit was exalted to the skies, and the good folks of Moscow, with one voice, swore he was the lii-st Tiolinist in the world.
As ^loscow appears only as a provincial city in its public amusements, so it has likewise a provincial air in its streets and coffee-houses. After iH concert of Mr. II. we were made to feel tliis, by finding in the coffeehouses at ten o'clock, none but a few French and Germans gossipi)ing and drinking the champagne of the Don. The Russian waiter, of whom wq inquired how it was that no Russians were to be seen, replied that it was always so ; the Nyemtzi (Germans) liked " prasgovorni" (talking two or three together), but that Russians only drank tea to throw themselves into a perspiration, and then went to bed. At eleven o'clock all Moscow is asleep, and it is difficult to get a conveyance, while in St. Petersburg they are to be had at every hour of the night. In St. Petersburg the shops are not opened, even in spring, before nine in the morning, whereas in Moscow purchases may be made two or three hours earlier.
Very few houses In Moscow possess wells ; nearly all the water used is drawn from the few stone basins in the streets. The manner in which the people draw the water is extraordinarily rude and simple. They drive the carts on which the barrels are placed close to the basin, bale out the water in little pails to which long poles are fastened, and from the pails, without any medium of spout or funnel, into the square bung-hole of the cask. Their aim is certainly remarkably good, and the greater part of the water goes into the barrel, but enough runs over, notwithstanding, to make a constant swamp in the summer, and a very inconvenient hill of ice in the winter. This waste is the more unpardonable, because the water is brought, with much labour and great cost, by the canal of Sukhareva Bashnia.