tion by picturesque
outlines and paintable surface-textures. At Kief, however, the traveller
is sufficiently south and east to fall in with warm southern hues
and Oriental harmonies, broken and enriched, moreover, among the
lower orders by that engrained dirt which I have usually noted as
the special privilege and prerogative of pilgrims in all parts of
the world. The use of soap would seem to be accounted as sacrilege
on religious sentiment. What with dust, and what with sun, the
wayfarers who toil up the heights leading to the holy hill have
gained a colour which a Murillo would delight in. The face and
neck bronzed by the hot sun tell out grandly from a flowing mass
of hair worthy of a patriarch.

[Illustration: THE DNIEPER AT KIEF.]

Beggars, who in Russia are as thick about the churches as the pigeons
that pick up crumbs in front of St. Mark's, are almost essential
to the histrionic panoramas at these places of pilgrimage. I have
never seen so large or so varied a collection of professional and
casual mendicants as within and about the sacred enclosures of Kief.
Some appeared to enjoy vested rights; these privileged personages
would as little endure to be driven from a favoured post as with us
a sweeper at a crossing would tolerate a rival broom. Several of
these waiters upon charity might be termed literary beggars; their
function is to read aloud from a large book in the hearing of the
passers-by. They are often infirm, and occasionally blind, but they
read just the same. Another class may be called the incurables; in
England they would be kept out of sight, but here in Russia, running
sores, mutilated hands and legs, are valuable as stock-in-trade.
Loathsome diseases are thrust forward as a threat, distorted limbs
are extortionate for alms; it is a piteous sight to see; some of
these sad objects are in the jaws of death, and come apparently
that they may die on holy ground. Another class may be called the
pious beggars; they stand at the church doors; they are picturesque
and apostolic; long beards and quiet bearing, with a certain
professional get-up of misery and desolation, make these sacred
mendicants grand after their kind. Such figures are usually ranged
on either side of the chief entrance; they are motionless as statues,
save when in the immediate act of soliciting alms; indeed I have
sometimes noticed how beggars standing before a church facade are
suggestive of statuary, the want of which is so much