re,
not only in their national style, but in the purest forms of French
art of the Louis XV. and Louis XVI. styles. Civil goldsmith's work
and jewellery have also been benefited by the national Renaissance:
the Emperor Alexander III. restored to honour the national feminine
costume for official balls, and ordered works of art to be made
after the models of the Muscovite style, and indeed even after
the marvels found in the excavations of the Cimmerian Bosphorus.
The religious images, particularly those made in Moscow and Kazan,
come very near being works of art. Numerous manufactories produce
icons painted on wood or copper, ornamented with reliefs of copper,
_crysocale_, silver, silver-gilt and gold. The workmen are monks
and peasants: each part of the icon--eyes, nose, mouth, hands and
feet--is executed by a specialist who always makes the same thing,
after the immutable types that the Muscovite convents received
from Mount Athos.

_RUSSIAN MUSIC_

_A. E. KEETON_

Russian music is the strangest paradox--it owes more to the music
of other countries than any other school, yet no music is more
thoroughly individual and unmistakable. It clothes itself after
the form and fashion of its neighbours, but beneath its garb peeps
out a physiognomy indubitably Sclavonic. Its utterances impress us
as the most modern--yet the student who would correctly analyze
many of its unique characteristics of harmony and modulation is often
obliged to take a flying leap backwards over a space of centuries
in order to investigate old Church modes, or Persian and Arabian
scale systems, both so ancient as to be well-nigh forgotten in
Western Europe.

Sixty years ago, there was no Russian school of music, properly
speaking; then suddenly it sprang into being. The wonderful rapidity
of its growth almost confuses one. Its exponents at once displayed
the astonishing receptiveness common to their race. _D'un trait_, as
the French would say, they appropriated the knowledge and experience
which the Italian and German schools had been slowly amassing for
centuries. Technique, form, counterpoint--all these they found
ready made to their hand, and borrowed them unstintingly. Had they
done this and no more, the onlooker might have dismissed them as
clever plagairists, and probably no one would have paid them any
further attention. But they had other means at their disposal. Their
country contained a treasure-house of native melody and rhythm;