d in England, all over Italy, in
Spain and in Greece, but not in Russia.

"A country of long winters and fierce summers, of rolling plains,
uninterrupted by mountains and unvariegated by valleys.

"And yet the charm is there. It is a fact which is felt by quantities of
people of different nationalities and races; and it is difficult if you
live in Russia to escape it; and once you have felt it you will never be
free from it. The aching melancholy song which, Gogol says, wanders from
sea to sea throughout the length and breadth of the land, will for ever
echo in your heart and haunt the recesses of your memory."[5]

[Illustration: _The Metropolitan of Moscow._]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Just as I go to press Mr. Lloyd George has told the House of Commons
that productivity is already increased 30 per cent. in Russia.

[3] The Hon. Maurice Baring.

[4] Wallace, _Russia_, vol. i, p. 129.

[5] _Russian Review_ for February, 1914.

CHAPTER IV

THE CLERGY

The Russian Church is a daughter of the Byzantine Church--the youngest
daughter--and only dates from the close of the tenth century, when monks
came to Kieff from Constantinople during the reign of Vladimir. There
would be little "preaching of the Cross of CHRIST," I should fancy, as
the great means of conversion for that great mass of servile population.
We are told, indeed, that Vladimir gave the word and they were baptized
by hundreds at a time in the River Dnieper, and that no opposition was
offered to the new religion as the old Nature worship had only very
lightly held them, and had no definite priesthood.

The new religion, however, soon acquired a very strong hold upon the
people of all classes, and the power and influence of the Church grew
just as the State gained ever-new importance; the power of the Patriarch
increasing as that of the Tsar increased, until in a comparatively short
time the Orthodox Church stood alone, and owned no Eastern supremacy on
the one hand, nor yielded to the approaches of the Roman Papacy on the
other. By the end of the sixteenth century the other Eastern Patriarchs
recognized and accepted the Patriarchate of Moscow as being an
independent one, and fifth of the Patriarchates of the East.

This absolute independence only lasted about a hundred years, and the
masterful Peter the Great laid his hands upon the Church as upon other
parts of the national life, for he certainly had little cause to love
the clergy, and appointed n