A correspondent tells us that the precautions taken on the
occasion of the Czar's visit to Moscow on the 20th of September were of the most exhaustive kind. The day and hour of the visit were concealed. All cellars along the St. Petersburg road. were searched by the police. Policemen were stationed behind all blank walls, lest they should be occupied by Nihilists; and all householders were forbidden by decree to go to their windows or stand upon their balconies. Transit across the line of the procession was forbidden, the effect of which order was to cleave the city in half as absolutely as if a chasm had opened within it, though a holiday was selected, so that the interruption might be less, and perhaps that the workmen might drown all other
• classes. The Emperor and Empress were well reeeived,—indeed, enthusiastically, but both in the carriage and among the more intelligent spectators the anxiety and awe produced by the sense that, despite all precautions, the vehicle might at any moment be blown with its occupants into space, were visible to the eye. There was no escort, and the police were in plain clothes, but it was clear that Emperor and Empress were performing their duty with the feelings of captives ordered to walk the plank. Yet a word from the Emperor would have caused the execution, of any man there, or raised him to the front rank iu the Em- pire. Talk of Damocles,—he should have sat out the chance. of an Orsini bomb for an hour, with half a million of eyes watch- ing his demeanour.
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