PLAN OF THE CENTRE OF MOSKVA CITY.
Scale of Feet.

A. THE KREMLIN.

B. THE KITAI GOROD.

At the foot of the Ivan Tower, supported by a pedestal of stone, is the largest bell in the world, and probably the largest that ever was in the world. A piece is broken out of its side, and the fragment is lying near. The breadth of the bell is so great,—it is twenty feet across,—that the cavity underneath has been used as a chapel, where as many people can stand as in a circle sixty feet around.

In Russia, the bell is an instrument of music for the worship of God as truly and really as the organ in any other country! This fact is not mentioned in the accounts we have of the wonderful, enormous, and almost incredibly heavy bells that have been cast in Moscow. But it is the key to what would otherwise be difficult to explain. It appears absurd to cast bells so large as to be next to impossible for convenient use; in danger always of falling and dragging others to ruin in their fall. But when the bell is a medium of communication with the Infinite, and the worship of a people and an empire finds expression in its majestic tones, it ceases to be a wonder that it should have a tongue which requires twenty-four men to move, and whose music should send a thrill of praise into every house in the city, and float away beyond the river into the plains afar.

Moscow is the holy city of the Greek Church. Pilgrims come hither from thousands of miles off, and on foot, and sometimes without shoes. I have seen them with staves in their hand, and their travel-worn feet wound up in cloths, wending their way to the sacred hill. And when they draw nigh unto the city, and on the evening air the music of these holy bells is first borne to their ears, they fall upon their faces, prostrate, and worship God. If they could go no further, they would be content to die there, for they have heard the bells of Moscow, and on their majestic tones their souls have been taken up to heaven. This is the sentiment of the superstitious peasant, and it is a beautiful sentiment, ideal indeed, but all the more delicate and exalted.

As long as five hundred years ago, this casting of bells was an art in Russia. It is one of the fine arts now. Perhaps our great bell-founders will not admit that the founders there have any more skill in their manufacture than we have, and I am not sure that their bells have any tones more exquisite than ours would have if we would put as much silver and gold into our bell-metal as they do. But so long as those precious metals are at the present premium, little or none of them will find its way into our church bells. We have not the idea of the Russian as to the use of a bell. We use it to call the people to the house of worship. They use the bell for worship. Our bells speak to us. Their bells praise God. They cast their silver and their gold into the molten mass, and it becomes an offering, as on an altar, to him who is worshipped with every silvery note and golden tone of the holy bell.

This one great bell is the growth of centuries. In 1553 it was cast, and weighed only 36,000 pounds. It fell in a fire, and was recast in 1654, being increased to the astonishing weight of 288,000 pounds. This was too vast a weight to be taken up to the top of the tower, and it was sustained by a frame at the foot of it. In 1706, it fell in another fire and was broken into fragments, which lay there on the ground about thirty years. It was recast in 1733; four years afterwards a piece was knocked out of the side of it, and it has been standing here on the ground more than a century. It weighs 444,000 pounds! In the thickest part it is two feet through. It has relief pictures on it of the Emperor and Empress, of the Saviour and the Virgin Mary, and the evangelists.