devotion.

"Or enter with me on a Sunday one of the gloomy image-adorned Russian
churches. If the dress of those present is not already sufficient to
indicate their difference of station, you may readily distinguish them by
the manner in which each person makes the sign of the cross. Consider
first that man of rank, as he stands before a miracle-working image of a
Kazanshian mother of God, bows slightly before it, and crosses himself
notably. Translated into our vernacular the language of this personage's
face would run in something like the following strain:--'I know that all
this is a pious farce, but one must give no offence to the people, else
all respect would be lost. Would the people continue to toil for us, if
they were to lose their trust in the assurances we cause to be made to
them of the joys of heaven?'

"Now look at that caftan-clad fat merchant, as, with crafty glance and
confident step, he makes up to the priest to get his soul freed from the
trafficking sins of the past week.

"He knows the priest, and is sure that a good piece of money will meet
with a good reception from him; that is why he goes so carelessly, in the
consciousness of being able to settle in the lump the whole of his sinful
account; and when the absolution is over, he takes his position in front
of the miraculous image, and makes so prodigious a sign of the cross, that
before this act all the remaining scruples of his soul must vanish away.

"Consider, in fine, that poor countryman, who steals in humbly at the
door, and gazes slyly round him in the incense-beclouded spaces. The pomp
and the splendour are too much for the poor fellow.

" 'God,' he thinks, 'but what a gracious lord the Emperor is, that he
causes such fine churches to be built for us poor devils! God bless the
Emperor!' And then he slips timidly up to some image where the golden
ground and the dark colours form the most glaring contrast, and throws
himself down before it, and crosses the floor with his forehead, so that
his long hair falls right over his face, and thus he wearies himself with
prostrations and enormous crossings, until he can do no more for
exhaustion. For the poorer the man in Russia, the larger the cross he
signs and wears."(106)

This description of the religious state of the Russian people, given by a
writer who is not very partial to their country, may be perhaps suspected
of exaggeration, or considered as being too much of a caricature; I shall