form
resembles the cup commonly combined in the fantastic towers and
spires of Protestant churches in Germany, where, however, it has
been supposed to signify that the laity partake of the chalice.
These domes are made further decorative at the point of the small
circular neck which connects the cupola with the upper member or
finial; around this surface is painted a continuous series of single
saints standing; the effect of these pictures against the sky,
if not quite artistic, is striking. Other parts of the exterior
may indicate Italian rather than Oriental origin, but the style
is far too mongrel to boast of any legitimate parentage. Here,
as in the Kremlin, are external wall-paintings of saints, some
standing on solid ground, others sitting among clouds; the Madonna
is of course of the company, and the First and Second Persons of
the Trinity crown the composition. The ideas are trite and the
treatment is contemptible--the colours pass from dirty red into
brown and black. These certainly are the worst wall-paintings I
have ever met with, worse even than the coarsest painted shrines
on the waysides of Italy; indeed no Church save the Greek Church
would tolerate an art thus debased. A year after my journey to Kief
I travelled through the Tyrol on my way from the Ammergau Passion
Play. The whole of this district abounds in frescoes, many being on
the external walls of private dwellings. This village art of the
Bavarian Highlands, though often the handiwork of simple artisans,
puts to shame both the external and the internal wall-paintings at
Kief, Troitza, and the Kremlin. Yet this contrast between Russia
and Southern nations does not arise so much from the higher ability
of the artists, as from the superiority of the one school to the
other school. The pictorial arts fostered by the Western Church
are fundamentally true, while the arts which the Eastern Church has
patronized and petrified are essentially false and effete.

The scene which strikes the eye on entering this parti-coloured
Cathedral of the Assumption, though strange, is highly picturesque.
To this holy shrine are brought the halt, the lame, and the blind,
as to the moving of the waters. Some press forward to kiss the
foot of a crucifix, others bow the head and kiss the ground, a
servile attitude of worship, which in the Greco-Russian Church
has been borrowed from the Mohammedans. The groups which throng
the narrow, crowded floor, are wonderfully effect