the Romanofs there was a strong reaction from the licence of the days of the impostors, a reaction which the all powerful Philaret as patriarch did his utmost to foster. Natalia was required to conform to the rules made on behalf of former tsaritsas, but she succeeded in going openly to church with her husband, saw plays through a latticed window, and the state reception of foreign ambassadors from a screened loge. In so short a time she accomplished much, but in 1676 her husband died, and she retired with her children to a palace near the foreign suburb of Moscow, and there the young prince, Peter, was raised amid rough surroundings, for the Matvievs were exiled and Natalia barely tolerated so near the Kremlin.
Theodore II. was most scholarly of the early Tsars; he was educated by Polish teachers, and, during his short reign the first public schools in Moscow were founded under his patronage. He separated the military from the civil departments; in military matters abolished precedence, and so altered legal procedure as to bring justice within reach of the people. He built the episcopal Palace of the Monastery of St Cyril at the Krutitski Vorot, and was particularly active in adding to the beautiful churches of Moscow. To him is due that gem of Muscovite ecclesiastical architecture, the church of the Nativity and Flight, in the Mala Dmitrovka (v. page 181). With an eye for the picturesque, he laid out a pleasure-garden in the Kremlin and another on the river front by making a vaulted embankment. Further away the slopes towards the river were planted with ornamental trees; medicinal herbs were largely cultivated, and the first hot-houses appeared in Moscow. Private dwellings in the Kremlin were demolished to afford accomodation for public buildings, and particularly for homes for the aged and sick, for the Tsar resembled his father and grandfather in his care of those who had served him, and in well-doing he was tireless. He disliked pomp and ceremony, restricted the ordinary citizens of noble birth to two horses in their carriages, and reduced the number used by others on State occasions; from his ascent to the throne the court pageantry declined.
In the seventeenth century almost the whole of the Kremlin was occupied with buildings appertaining either to the state or the superior clergy. The churches are still sufficiently in evidence, but such of the old dwellings as remain have to be approached through more recent buildings. The Granovitaia (Facetted) Palace of Ivan III. (1491) presents a façade to the Sobornia Ploshchad, but this in no way reveals its antiquity. The constant renewal of the exterior which is indispensable to preservation in the destructive climate of Moscow, to some extent accounts for this; and the “terem,” the outside of which may be viewed from the quadrangle on which stands the old church “Spass na Boru,” is equally disappointing in this particular. Even to see the interiors the visitors must pass through the Great Palace, with which these old dwellings are now incorporated. The site occupied by the eastern end of the Great Palace is that upon which, from the founding of Moscow, the residences of its rulers have been again and again erected, but they faced the east, not south. The wooden palaces of the early Romanofs have entirely disappeared; Peter the Great removed from Moscow whatever would serve to enrich his new capital, and allowed the old royal residences to decay. It is during the present century only that they have been restored to their earlier grandeur. The palace built by the Empress Elizabeth, and occupied by Napoleon, was destroyed by the fire of 1812.
The visitor will first procure a billet d’admission at the Chamberlain’s office in Commandant Street (see plan), turn to the left on leaving the building, and walking towards the south, at the end of the street pass under the Winter Garden which connects the Treasury with the Great Palace. He will then be