best; and thus it often happened that these
images, being placed opposite to the altar, people in praying to them
turned their backs to the officiating priest, which generally produced
great confusion, and disturbed the performance of divine service. There
was a very great competition amongst those people in ornamenting their
images as showily as possible; and as the sanctity of an image was
increased, according to the opinion of those baptised idolaters, in
proportion to the richness of its ornaments, it often happened that a poor
man, who could not afford to trim up smartly his own image, addressed his
prayers to that of his richer neighbour. Such an adoration, however, was
considered as contraband; and when the lawful owner of the image caught
one of those pious interlopers, he not only sharply rebuked him, but
frequently gave him a sound thrashing, saying that he did not go to the
expense of decorating his image that another should obtain its
favours.(115)

Scandalous scenes of this description have been abolished in the
established church by the reforms of the Patriarch Nicon, alluded to
above, but something very like it may still be witnessed in the churches
of the _Raskolniks_, who have separated from the established church on
account of those reforms. These people often bring their own images to the
churches to pray before them, and it frequently happens amongst the boys
who worship in this way, that some of them, perceiving that their
neighbour has a finer image than their own, they steal it from him,
substituting that which belongs to them. This produces quarrels and
fighting amongst these boys, who reproach one another, saying, You
So-and-so, you have stolen my fine image which cost my father two roubles,
and left me this wretched one, which is not worth fifty copecs, _i.e._,
half a rouble. These scenes would be ludicrous if they were not positively
blasphemous, because these images are called on such occasions, as is
always done, by the name of gods, _boghi_.

It has been observed by some travellers in Russia that the image-dealers
of that country do not sell their wares, but, by a kind of legal fiction,
exchange them for a certain sum, and that consequently they are disposed
of at a fixed price. This is, however, not the case, and the image-dealers
of Russia make no exception to the other merchants of that country, who
generally ask for their goods the treble of their value, and a reasonable
price can onl