One of them said that he had come from a monastery in the south, where they are more like hermits and wear coarser habits, though they have no strict hermits now in Russia. Here, though their monastery is called an hermitage (poustin), they all wear cotton velvet (demivelours). This was ordered with some other relaxations by the Emperor Alexander, because they were so near the capital. As for us, they said, our bodies are used to those creatures; for though we take our baths like other Russians, we change our under-garments only once a week, once a fortnight, or even once a month. "Is that by preference," I asked, "or by rule?" "No," the speaker replied, "from neither, but from poverty and, after all, those creatures have their use, to teach one patience. In the south the monks swarm with them." He seemed to wonder at my questions, and especially at my wish to turn some of their monasteries into working and learned communities; and he kept repeating that prayer and holiness have more efficacy than learning or work of any kind. "Yes, yes," I said, "but the Church needs both." He seemed to think that the current had already set far too much in the direction of intellectual cultivation. "The white clergy," he said, "are all over-burdened with work and families" (the latter he seemed to think at best a necessary evil), "and the Academicians " (meaning all the higher monastic clergy) "are equally

taken up with work and instruction. The monasteries are little thought of by anybody, though they have more than once saved Russia."

He continued, "The secular clergy are infected with liberalism. They read Lutheran and other bad foreign books; and the bishops, though better than they were at the end of the last century, are no friends of monasticism in the true sense of the word. Only five out of fifty (one of the five being the Metropolitan of Kieff) protect the monks; for though they are all by profession monks themselves, yet they are also all Academicians, and under the influence of the civil power. Peter the Great would have destroyed monasticism altogether if he could, but he was not strong enough to do that at once, and he died. It was no merit of his that it has been preserved. And now to how few are the monks in Russia reduced! There were once above 40,000, there are now only 4000, in 400 monasteries, and perhaps 16,000 inferiors. And who is there now of the great men of the world, or of princes, who ever thinks of receiving the tonsure, either in life, or before death? That is contrary, alas! to the ideas dominant everywhere."

1 [One must recollect that in every nation there is a multitude of parties and classes, with their separate esprit de corps, traditions, antagonisms, &c. &c. What these good monks say of other bodies must not be taken to the letter; this applies with still greater force to some of the statements made in the chapters which follow.]

The ideal of their monastic life is or was to divide the twenty-four hours of the night and day into three equal parts, and to give on the whole eight hours to the divine offices (though if fully performed they would often take more), eight to labour, and eight for meals, sleep, and recreation. In some places in Russia, as at the Valaam Monastery (on an island in the Ladoga Lake) the monks really do labour, as in primitive times. But in most cases there is considerable remissness in this respect. Nor do the church services, though long, fill up, as they are commonly performed, so much as eight hours, though certainly they do not take less than six.

In other monasteries there is much more dirt, and more vermin than here. The monks wear coarser shirts, and gowns of serge or hair, and lie harder, and sing the offices at greater length. They wear a cross on their breast, and a cross (quite small) under their shirt, on the middle of their breast. All rise in the morning before four or five a.m., and sleep two hours after dinner, which is at half past eleven a.m. or at twelve, after the liturgy. They communicate three or four times in the week, and priests generally confess once a quarter, lay people once a year only (though to communicate four times, i.e. at the four fasts, is recommended) and to communicate once at Easter is required of all by the Church. They live in hopes that one day

or other the monasteries and churches may regain their Some monasteries even now possess a

This one has a farm in

possessions. fish-pond and a farm or so. the neighbourhood which is managed by a monk. The people are not allowed to give or bequeath serfs to the monasteries, but they may give or bequeath money, houses, or lands. Only for this there must be a special permission from the Emperor: and the people do not think much of making any such gifts or bequests now. The efforts, however, which are making by the Government to improve the maintenance of all the parochial clergy (who have never been plundered), are truly laudable, and may fairly be thought to be some sort of reparation for the spoliation of the episcopal and monastic estates in former times.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Sergiefsky Reminiscences continued.

HEY showed a strong feeling against the Pope;

THEY

and listened readily when I maintained that it is wrong to call his followers Catholics; and still more wrong to call them all alike Catholics, as if there were no difference between the Christians of dioceses originally Latin, and those schismatics who to follow the Pope separate themselves from the Eastern or from the British Churches.

Another time when I had blamed the virulence of Theophanes Procopovich in calling the Pope (or perhaps he meant the Roman Church) "Romana Bestia," the Father Tchihacheff laughed, and said, "He would have been equally ready to call the Russians bestias, if the Tsar had wished him to do so. Theophanes Procopovich was a man of light character, though clever and eloquent."

"The morals of the capital," they said, "are worthy of Babylon there are theatres, and balls, and masquerades,