found many doors open to them which
are usually closed to travellers in Russia. After their visit to Nijni
Novgorod they returned to Moscow, whence, escorted by Bishop Leonide,
Suffragan Bishop of Moscow, they made an expedition to the Troitska
Monastery.

_August 12th_.--A most interesting day. We breakfasted
at half-past five, and soon after seven left by railway, in
company with Bishop Leonide and Mr. Penny, for Troitska
Monastery. We found the Bishop, in spite of his limited
knowledge of English, a very conversational and entertaining
fellow-traveller. The service at the cathedral had already
begun when we reached it, and the Bishop took us in with
him, through a great crowd which thronged the building, into
a side room which opened into the chancel, where we remained
during the service, and enjoyed the unusual privilege of
seeing the clergy communicate--a ceremony for which the
doors of the chancel are always shut, and the curtains
drawn, so that the congregation never witness it. It was a
most elaborate ceremony, full of crossings, and waving of
incense before everything that was going to be used, but
also clearly full of much deep devotion.... In the afternoon
we went down to the Archbishop's palace, and were presented
to him by Bishop Leonide. The Archbishop could only talk
Russian, so that the conversation between him and Liddon (a
most interesting one, which lasted more than an hour) was
conducted in a very original fashion--the Archbishop making
a remark in Russian, which was put into English by the
Bishop; Liddon then answered the remark in French, and the
Bishop repeated his answer in Russian to the Archbishop. So
that a conversation, entirely carried on between two people,
required the use of three languages!

The Bishop had kindly got one of the theological students,
who could talk French, to conduct us about, which he did
most zealously, taking us, among other things, to see the
subterranean cells of the hermits, in which some of them
live for many years. We were shown the doors of two of the
inhabited ones; it was a strange and not quite comfortable
feeling, in a dark narrow passage where each had to carry a
candle, to be shown the low narrow door of a little cellar,
and to know that a human being was living within, with only
a small lamp to give him light