s.

Moreover, if we follow the streams of art to their sources, we soon
come to recognize that the tributaries are not at all numerous.

In the matter of architecture, there are only two principles: structure
by wood and concrete structure: grottoes, and construction with clay,
and with masonry, which is derived from it. As to construction with
cut stones, there results, either from a tradition of building
with wood or from concrete construction, grottoes or conglomerate
masses, sometimes both, as in Egyptian art, for example.

The innumerable races who issued from the East and finally overwhelmed
the Roman Empire had preserved from their cradle their own traditions,
and continued to keep up communication with their old homes. Better
than any other nation, the Russians preserved these traditions, and
they were, so to speak, rejuvenated every time a new wave passed
across their territories; for it was always from the northern or
southern Orient, from the Ural or the Taurus, that the invaders
came. Whether they presented themselves as enemies or colonists
they brought with them something of Asia, the great mother of
civilizations.

This Russian art, therefore, was never struck with decadence as
was the Byzantine art. It did not live solely upon itself, but
profited by all that was brought from the Orient. So, when the
Eastern Empire fell during the Fifteenth Century, leaving only
a pale trace of the last expressions of its arts, Russia, on the
contrary, was raising edifices and fabricating objects of great
value from an artistic point of view.

The West had only a small share in these productions, but even
this was enough to enable Russian art to be distinguished from the
arts of the East by a certain freedom of conception and variety in
the execution that rendered it an original product full of promise,
the developments of which might have been marvellous if the natural
course of events had not been hindered by the passion with which
high Russian society threw itself on the works of art of Italy,
Germany and France.

_SCULPTURE AND PAINTING_

_PHILIPPE BERTHELOT_

Western influence was very strongly felt in sculpture and painting
in Russia during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Narrowly
confined to the representation of conventional types of saints,
these arts did not acquire either personality or expression for
two centuries. It was not until the Eighteenth Century that they
began to raise sta