rised, and the
serfs of the Church became serfs of the State. This was a severe
blow for the monasteries, but it did not prove fatal, as many people
predicted. Some monasteries were abolished and others were reduced to
extreme poverty, but many survived and prospered. These could no longer
possess serfs, but they had still three sources of revenue: a limited
amount of real property, Government subsidies, and the voluntary
offerings of the faithful. At present there are about 500 monastic
establishments, and the great majority of them, though not wealthy,
have revenues more than sufficient to satisfy all the requirements of an
ascetic life.

Thus in Russia, as in Western Europe, the history of monastic
institutions is composed of three chapters, which may be briefly
entitled: asceticism and missionary enterprise; wealth, luxury, and
corruption; secularisation of property and decline. But between Eastern
and Western monasticism there is at least one marked difference.
The monasticism of the West made at various epochs of its history
a vigorous, spontaneous effort at self-regeneration, which found
expression in the foundation of separate Orders, each of which proposed
to itself some special aim--some special sphere of usefulness. In Russia
we find no similar phenomenon. Here the monasteries never deviated
from the rules of St. Basil, which restrict the members to religious
ceremonies, prayer, and contemplation. From time to time a solitary
individual raised his voice against the prevailing abuses, or retired
from his monastery to spend the remainder of his days in ascetic
solitude; but neither in the monastic population as a whole, nor in any
particular monastery, do we find at any time a spontaneous, vigorous
movement towards reform. During the last two hundred years reforms have
certainly been effected, but they have all been the work of the civil
power, and in the realisation of them the monks have shown little more
than the virtue of resignation. Here, as elsewhere, we have evidence of
that inertness, apathy, and want of spontaneous vigour which form one of
the most characteristic traits of Russian national life. In this, as in
other departments of national activity, the spring of action has lain
not in the people, but in the Government.

It is only fair to the monks to state that in their dislike to progress
and change of every kind they merely reflect the traditional spirit of
the Church to which they belong. The R