The Kazan Cathedral.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 127, 23 March 1901, Page 3

The Kazan Cathedral.

Tho Cathedral of tho Virgin of Kazan, in St. Petersburg, which lias just been the scene of a terrible incident arising out of the riots caused by the excommunication of Count Tolstoi, is one of the most celebrated churches in the Russian capital. It does not, however, Hold tins position on account of its appearance, for it has been described as an ugly imitation, on a small scale, of St. Peters, in Rome, while another visitor declares it to bo truly comic in its ambitious imitation. The internal effect is not so grotesque,(and the nave is remarkable for its hu-e?and hand some monoliths of Finland granite. But tho Cathedral has no need- to depend foU'celehrity upon any archi teclural splendour. It is as a kind of Pantheon,(a saoredpuuseum of national trophies,’that it is most widelv known. In it lie such visible .tokens of Russia's military’successes as the keys of German and French towns, the batons of French marshals, [standards captured in wars with Franco, Turkey, and Persia. The Persian dags are distinguishable by the largo silver hand thatjsurmuunts each,'while the Turkish flags, surmounted by the Crescent, are simply largo pieces of new cloth, mostly red (and unsoiled, looking, as one writer remarks, as if they had boon handed over to the Russians out of politeness and without striking a blow. How they belie the real nature of the battles in which they were won. history attestsjoy the chronicles of many a stricken held. Near to these trophies of war hang the French standards. Those bear plain i evidence that they were not surrendered calmly; “ They are rent in pieces, and to many of the eagles’ a single dusty fragment is attached. Of some the Russians have only carried off tho flagstaff, perhaps because the French ensign had swallowed the last rag, that it might not fall into the hands of the enemy. How many unknown deeds of heroism may these fl.igs not have witness! ! Those eagles with their expanded wings, with which they vainly sought to cover the whole empire, look strangely enough in the places they now roost in.” Tho Kazan Cathedral has at times been the scone of groat pageants, for thither have resorted, before setting out upon or returning from journeys, the emperors and empresses of Russia, for the purpose of invoking the protection of “Our Lady of Kazan,” or of returning thanks for response to prayers. Thither wont Alexander I. after his campaign against Napoleon. In this Cathedral, or in the original edifice on the site, took place the coronation of the notorious Empress Catherine 11., so that in one way and another the building which has just been desecrated by the brutal conflict between Cossacks and student admirers of Tolstoi has played a considerable part in the Russian history.