were all said, as they ought to be, Matins would often take five or six hours, Liturgy two, Vespers and the rest three; in all, from eleven to thirteen hours, so as to leave but short intervals for food and rest, and certainly not much time for study. In actual use they are somewhat curtailed, and they are further shortened by being hurried over; still they occupy a large part of the day." N.B.-Those I heard at the Sergiefsky took six or seven hours. "And our monasteries have never been anything more than Houses of Prayer. Certainly, it might be well to change somewhat; mais, que voulez-vous? We must do the best we can, and improve what we have got."

I told him how the monks had advised me to ask for a cell in the Spiritual Academy. He said, "They are always occupied; you would see nobody. The interior of the Academy would not please you; you would have fleas, bugs, and other annoyances. The inmates are not a community, but peasant clergy and sons of clergy, with all their peculiarities and prejudices; you would be a sort of strange animal for them. They would regard you as a heretic; and their having an English deacon there would be a scandal. They have not your ideas of unity, and would not understand them."

I said, "It seems they can enter into Protestant ideas; why not into Catholic? One might perhaps do

something to conciliate them, and to change their dispositions towards us."

He answered, "You would not get on among them, not even though you conformed to all their usages; and the Russian youths are very mischievous and sarcastic, and they might make you uncomfortable. Why not go and stay in the Sergiefsky?" I said, "When I spoke of that to them, they suggested rather the Nefsky or the Academy." "Oh, that," he said, was only because the Archimandrite was not authorized to offer you a cell. In the meantime-though I don't think you will find one-you may see if you can get into the house of a white priest." And he recommended me to cultivate the acquaintance of the underpriest of the Isaac Church, named Stratelatoff. He said, "It is only because the Archimandrite and some of the monks at the Sergiefsky are gentlemen, that they received you so well there. Not only white clergy, but monks too, anywhere else, would have been far from cordial."

He said that "in the last century, here, as everywhere else, there was a leaning towards Protestantism. Peter III. and Catherine II. did much mischief, and had well-nigh abolished the monasteries; but now, all that is past, and there is everywhere a reaction; and the monks have nothing to fear. The only thing to be done now is, to keep things as they are, and to improve

I do not

"There is

them. You see, I speak frankly with you. show you only our good side." I said, good enough for my purpose; for my object is chiefly to help towards the correction of great and manifest evils in my own communion."

CHAPTER XLIII.

Conversations with M. Mouravieff, M. Skreepitsin, and the Priest Stratelatoff.

OCTOBER 2 [o.s.].—One, p.m., at the Synod, where

I saw M. Mouravieff and M. Skreepitsin.' Had some further conversation with M. Mouravieff. On my urging on him, as on F. Brenchininoff, a special prayer for the Anglican Church, he said, "We know you only as heretics. You separated from the Latin Church 300 years ago, as the Latins had before that fallen away from the Greeks. We think even the Latin Church heretical; but you are an apostasy from an apostasy; a progression from bad to worse." I said, "We never separated by any synodical act from the communion of the Latin Churches, nor from that of the Eastern either. "How?" he exclaimed, "you were part of the Pope's patriarchate, and you rebelled against him." I said, "The Pope our Patriarch!" "How?" he said, "did he not send Augustine to convert you anyhow the

1 [This gentleman seems to have had a place in Count Pratasoff's Chancery with M. Mouravieff; elsewhere he is called the Count's" colleague."]

Pope had acquired, and the Church had confirmed to him, very great power. And did not one of your kings even make England a fief of the Pope?"

He continued, "You had better say nothing to Count Pratasoff of that desire of yours for a special prayer for the Anglican Church. It is an idea quite new and unheard of. Our business is to improve our own Church, and to keep in view the Raskolniks, not to scandalize our people by introducing any such novelty. What would the English and the French Ambassadors here say to it? Then, again, there are the Eastern Patriarchs, who know you only through the Latin Church, through the Pope. If we had any communication with your Church, it must be through the Pope, and the Church of Rome, nor can we recognize you otherwise. Reconcile yourself to your own Patriarch first, and then come and talk to us, if you think you have anything to say to us. And you must imagine, not only what our Raskolniks and what the Greeks would say, but what would be said by the Latins, who are always watching us, and what by the Uniats, who have been so long in union with Rome."

2 [As before, it need not be meant by this that they positively rejected the idea of praying for individual heretics, but of praying for an heretical Church; for they could not pray for it as a Church without acknowledging its existence; whereas Greece and Rome know Englishmen only as "Lutherans " and "Calvinists," and ignore the "Church of England."]