which was forced upon them has never
penetrated the mass of the people. The national peculiarity has
remained complete in language, manners, and customs, in a highly
remarkable municipal constitution, the freest and most independent
existing anywhere; and, finally, in their architecture. The last can,
of course, only be applied to the churches. In Russia nearly
everything is new. What is older than a hundred years is looked upon
as an antiquity. The Russian dwelling-house is of wood, and therefore
never reaches that age, unless, like the one of Peter the Great, it be
encased by a stone one. Even the palaces of the Emperor are new, and
only here in Moscow can be found a ruin of the old Dworez of the
Czars. There are churches in existence of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries (a great age for Russia), and the strictly conservative
spirit of the priesthood has been instrumental in retaining the same
style of architecture in the later buildings.

The St. Sophia, in Constantinople, is the model upon which all Russian
churches are built. It was imitated everywhere, but never equalled,
not even by St. Mark's in Venice. There was lack both of material and
skill to build an arch with a span of one hundred and twenty-six feet.
What could not be accomplished in width was attempted in height. The
domes became narrow and tall, like towers. The rough stone, handled
without art, rendered clumsy pillars and thick walls necessary, in
which the windows, like embrasures, are cut narrow and deep. The
brightest light falls through the windows in the thinner wall which
supports the cupolas. Nearly all churches are higher than they are
long and wide. The clumsy tetragonal pillars contract the already
narrow space. One has nowhere a free view, and a mystic twilight
reigns everywhere. The most famous Russian churches can only
accommodate as many hundreds as a Gothic cathedral can thousands. It
is true most of them were built by Italian masters; but the latter
were obliged to conform to the rules and forms already in use.

Since the architectonic conditions were unfavorable to the creation of
a magnificent whole, an attempt was made to ornament the individual
parts with brilliancy and magnificence. Not contented to gild the
churches inside and out, the floors were paved with half-precious
stones, and the pictures (of no artistic value) were covered with
jewels, diamonds, and pearls. Only the faces and hands are painted;
the garments, crow