Parents paying £4 or £5 have the right to see that their child is brought up in the house and not sent out to nurse.
If a boy, and left by his parent without any deposit, he is brought up for the army as a common soldier, but if 250 roubles or £40 sterling be left with him, he will become an officer. All who show ability become engineers or are sent to the University.
The girls, according to their taste and ability, are instructed in painting or music, and if intended for governesses are taught German or French. The majority of girls, after receiving a common and useful education, are employed in manual labour, and all, without distinction of age or sex, can return to the hospital should they fall into distress in after life.
The annual expenses of the establishment amount, it is said, to nearly a million sterling.
The policy, and certainly the moral consequences of keeping up such an institution are more than doubtful.
There are two theatres, one very large, containing a suite of immense rooms, used for masked balls and similar entertainments, but is only open during the winter season; the other is chiefly carried on by French performers, and was well filled on the evening we attended.
The great Riding School is one of the wonders of Moscow, being 560 feet long and 158 feet broad and 42 feet in height; supposed to be the largest room in the world unsupported by pillars or props of any kind.
This vast enclosure gives ample room for two regiments of cavalry to go through all their manœuvres unobstructed by stormy weather, being heated by upwards of twenty stoves.
The Bazaar is also an immense pile of building, three storeys high, comprising 5,228 shops, connected by an endless number of passages and steps. In these courts and galleries there is a continual fair throughout the year, attended by traders from every part of Europe, Siberia, China, and Tartary, numbering upwards of 1,000 merchants, all eager and very importunate to do business.
In the same neighbourhood are many streets of shops, arranged in masses, perhaps thirty shops for paper, another range for spices, a third for ornamental articles, and a fourth for pictures and saints.