shippers,
unless on some particular occasions or to some privileged persons. The
Emperor himself sets the example of this pious _osculation_, a striking
instance of which occurred in the summer of last year, 1853, under
circumstances which deserve a particular notice.

I have said above, p. 161, that several millions of the followers of the
Greek United Church had been forced by the present emperor to transfer
their spiritual allegiance from the Pope to himself. Several of their
churches contain miraculous images of the Virgin, of more or less repute,
and which were obliged to share the fate of their worshippers, and to
become schismatics as much as the latter. Their vested rights have not
been, however, injured in any way by this revolution, because they
continue to be worshipped, and to work miracles as they did before, or,
what is the same thing, they are fully authorised to do so. The Russian
government followed on this occasion its usual line of policy, which is to
promote those who have joined it, forsaking their former party; and thus
one of the most distinguished of these miracle-working converts, the
Madonna of Pochayoff, a little town in Wolhynia, was transferred from her
provincial station to Warsaw, and placed there in a newly built Russian
cathedral, probably with the object of inducing the Roman Catholic
inhabitants of that capital to imitate an example set to them in such a
high quarter, and to acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Czar as
much as they are obliged to submit to his temporal dominion. When the
emperor was going last year to Olmutz, in order to persuade the Austrian
court to support his policy in Turkey, he passed through Warsaw, and
repairing, immediately after his arrival in that city, to the Russian
cathedral, kissed the above-mentioned miraculous image of the Madonna of
Pochayoff with such fervour that it produced quite a sensation upon all
those who were present, and was noticed in the newspapers as a proof of
the autocrat's piety. Yet whether this Madonna, notwithstanding her
outward conversion to the Graeco-Russian Church, remains a Romanist at
heart, or whether, for some other reason, she could or would not support
the views of her imperial worshipper, the result of the Czar's voyage to
Olmutz proved that the caresses which he had bestowed upon the Madonna in
question were _love's labours lost_. It may be also observed, that the
emperor himself seems not to have been quite sure o