ionate, is another. The drunkenness in all classes
strikes Russian statesmen with dismay, and the priests and the
popes, are among the worst delinquents. They are fast losing the
authority they once had over the serfs, when they formed part of
the great political system, of which the Tsar was the religious and
political head. A Russian official report says that "the churches
are now mostly attended by women and children, while the men are
spending their last kopeck, or getting deeper into debt, at the
village dram shop."

Church festivals, marriages, christenings, burials and fairs, leave
only two hundred days in the year for the Russian labourer. The
climate is so severe as to prevent out-of-door work for months,
and the enforced idleness increases the natural disposition to
do nothing. "We are a lethargic people," says Gogol, "and require
a stimulus from without, either that of an officer, a master, a
driver, the rod, or _vodki_ (a white spirit distilled from corn);
and this," he adds in another place, "whether the man be peasant,
soldier, clerk, sailor, priest, merchant, seigneur or prince."
At the time of the Crimean War it was always believed that the
Russian soldier could only be driven up to an attack, such as that
of Inkermann, under the influence of intoxication. The Russian
peasant is indeed a barbarian at a very low stage of civilization.
In the Crimean hospitals every nationality was to be found among
the patients, and the Russian soldier was considered far the lowest
of all. Stolid, stupid, hard, he never showed any gratitude for
any amount of care and attention, or seemed, indeed, to understand
them; and there was no doubt that during the war he continually put
the wounded to death in order to possess himself of their clothes.

The Greek Church is a very dead form of faith, and the worship of
saints of every degree of power "amounts to a fetishism almost as
bad as any to be found in Africa." I am myself the happy possessor
of a little rude wooden bas-relief, framed and glazed, of two saints
whose names I have ungratefully forgotten, to whom if you pray
as you go out to commit a crime, however heinous, you take your
pardon with you--a refinement upon the whipping of the saints in
Calabria and Spanish hagiolatry. The icons, the sacred images,
are hung in the chief corner, called "The Beautiful," of a Russian
_izba_. A lamp is always lit before them, and some food spread
"for the ghosts to come and eat." T