ege of
Edinburgh. By a Russian, Quondam Civis Bibliothecae Edinensis."
Edinburgh: Thomas C. Jack, 92 Princes Street. London: Hamilton,
Adams, & Co. 1854.

124 Letter xxxvi., at the end.

_ 125 Vide supra_, p. 184.

126 "Custine's Russia," letter xxxvi. The same opinion is expressed by
Baron Haxthausen, whom I have quoted above, and who says, "The sons
of the papas and other young men acquire in the seminaries and
ecclesiastical academies a certain degree of theological learning,
after which they indue the monacal dress, and are inscribed on the
rolls of some convent, without however remaining in it. They enter
the offices of bishops and archbishops to perform their personal as
well as clerical service. Their position becomes then exactly the
same as that of the military aides-de-camp of the Generals, and of
the civil ones of ministers, and it is from amongst them that
bishops, archimandrites, abbots, &c., are chosen. It is a career
like every other service in Russia. Several of these ecclesiastics
may have chosen their calling from a real devotion; the most part of
them are, however, driven into it by an immeasurable ambition,
selfishness, speculation, and vanity, the curse of the upper classes
of Russia."--(_Studien ueber Russland_, vol. i., p. 89.) It must be
remarked that all the dignities of the Greek church are reserved for
the monastic or _regular_ clergy, whilst the secular (who cannot
take orders without being married) do not rise above the station of
a parish priest. This last-named function, which gives no prospects
of promotion, is generally left to such theological students as are
not fit for any thing better, and, with some few honourable
exceptions, they are generally an ignorant and drunken set, treated
with very little respect by the upper classes. The following
anecdote, characteristic of the moral and intellectual condition of
that class of the Russian clergy, was related to the author by a
friend who had resided for some time in Russia. A landowner of the
government of Kazan, Mr Bakhmetieff, who was very fond of the
pleasures of the table in the old style, was in the habit of
inviting to his revels the priests of the neighbourhood. Once, when
his clerical guests had got so drunk as to lose all consci