A Call on "Mother Moscow"

VARIETY of climate is the one relief which the seasons bring to the monotonous contour of the empire of plains. If earth has welded this territory into the awful unity of a land without mountains, heaven has at least given its spatial immensities the vicissitudes of her genial hues and changeful smile. In a very true sense it may be said that celestial pigments, not Appalachian ranges, mark off from each other the natural divisions of many-peopled Russia. She has her vault of blinding white, fit heaven of the frozen marshes and the Arctic Ocean; her sky of pale green, roof of summer midnight in her city of granite and cold ; her arch of light blue, canopy of her spring floods and forest aisles ; her concave of deep azure, lord of the weaving steppe, from the “ black earth,” yielder of Ceres’ choicest gifts, to the infertile plains, gray and smooth as a lunar sea; and then, southernmost of all, in Mediterranean parallels, her Krym and Caspian firmaments, tenderer than the sky of Italy, and more lustrous than the Egyptian night.

Below, as above, to the traveler moving through it, Russia is a panorama of shifting lights and shades, or rather, one might say, a complete story of Nature’s relation to her environment, with the hypothesis of natural selection left out. Among the snow-fields of the north, life runs its cycle bleached from year to year. The very trees seem to mimic with their garments the universal whiteness ; while the lower vegetation goes its round in never-varying livery of deadened, inert green, — a green which, compared with the vivid hues of southern flora, can scarcely be called worthy of the name. The human visage itself reflects the prevailing monotony, and so widely is color banished from the faces of human beings that it has come to rank, by mere rarity, as the chief attribute of beauty in women. Easy, nevertheless, is the escape from the tree-belted realm of this tyranny of snow. Go southward but a few hundred versts, and already you shall see the widening out of summer’s dominion around you, and above the deepening of the heavens into blue. The further you descend, the brighter grows the prospect. At first the forests relax from their sombre severity, and erelong salute you with their thousand voices; then laughing lights play from the steppe lands ; soon you come to regions where village children grow brown and maidens red in the sun.

It is through changing scenes like these — like them in kind, if not in degree — that the traveler passes, in his first trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Even the natives call it a journey from Europe into Asia, yet the route suggests antitheses of quite another kind. Such details of line construction as meet the eye recall, not the Orient, but the far West. The method of securing rail to sleeper, the rudely built wooden stationhouse, the roughly trimmed tree doing duty as a telegraph - post, the rail - iron used in the making of gates, the slowgoing locomotive with its cone-shaped stack, the train itself, its stove, and conductor, and end-to-end passage, — all these things belong to the category of railway experiences in the New World. The terminal buildings, on the other hand, are English in their massive ugliness, while the restaurants and dininghalls they inclose bring back memories of midday repasts in the French capital. It is noteworthy, as illustrating the truth that civilization first makes its way along the great highways of commerce, that to the iron road falls the credit of having introduced into Russia the American country depot, flanked by the English lawn and garden, bright with many flowers.

It is only the social character of traveling in Russia that can rightly be called Russian, and so the novelty of the trip from St. Petersburg to Moscow is largely reserved for him whose railway experiences have been gained in the countries of the West. The fear to converse with one’s fellow-passenger, which destroys the pleasure of a trip, say, between Liverpool and London, has no place on railway lines in a land where the forming of “ travel acquaintances ” constitutes so large a part of the exhilaration of movement from city to city. The Russians journey as, for the most part, they live, with the profound conviction that men and women are human beings ; and so far they have not reached that modern stage in which the fleeting attribute is made superior to the thing which it should merely qualify, in which the redness or blueness of its binding has become of more importance than the book itself, in which the minor classification of money swamps the major classification of man. That Russian should be the only language in Europe which expresses companionship of travel in a single word ¹ alone suggests this unique thriving of democratic manners in unfavorable soil. How valuable these railway customs are to a true interest in the life and ideas of a great people cannot be easily told. In a few hours one is made acquainted with everything weighty enough to be narrated concerning one’s fellow-passengers, — the story, given in his own words, of each man’s past and present, his career, his position or business, his aims and hopes for the future. Such confidences as these have all the charm of spontaneousness ; wholly unchecked by any suspicion that the listener can be bored by the flow of personal history under such circumstances, they illustrate the abounding social sense of the Great Russian, and show how he can be dignified and expansive, picturesque, enthusiastic, sentimental, by turns, but always at his best. Nor does all this communicativeness end merely in talk. Once fairly acquainted with each other, the passengers tacitly form a sort of society for mutual service, every member pledged to aid in the satisfaction of whatever necessities, individual or collective, the journey may from time to time bring forth.

Such racial characters as these gain added impressiveness from the fact that in Russia there is no wealthy class selfseparated from the rest of the people by its habit, as the phrase runs, of “ traveling first-class.” Save on occasions rare enough to be phenomenal, the same carriages which receive the peasant, the priest, the artisan, the soldier, and the student also convey the merchant, the rich country nobleman, and the landowning millionaire. Instead of being divided, moreover, by rival or widely differing interests, the representatives of classes outwardly so various and isolated from each other are really united at many points by a common bond of union. The land-owner, like the merchant, has probably risen from the smallest beginnings, and feels sympathy, born of his own struggles, with the humblest phases of life. The nobleman — in all likelihood a man of the modern school — draws from principle the humanitarian breadth which comes to the man of affairs by impulse. Both men have sons at the universities, and both have passed through the army. The student’s father is either a merchant, a priest, or a peasant, determined by the “ new ideas,” as they are called, to give his children the best education he can procure for them. The peasant character, again, is naturally interchangeable with that of the priest, and the priest, in a majority of cases, is a peasant transformed by a suitable course of tuition. Take this man of the flowing robe and rob him of his smattering of ecclesiastical Slavonic ; simplify a little his ideas on geographical, astronomical, and political subjects ; then reapparel him in sheep-skin overcoat, fur cap, and bark sandals, and you will make of him as typical a peasant as may be. On the other hand, send this giant of the steppe to an ecclesiastical seminary for a few years, and discharge him in priestly attire, and you will find him fairly qualified for membership of the white clergy. Remember, too, that, widely as pursuits may separate these your fellow-passengers, a single habit makes them one. They have a horror of the sessile life by which higher as well as lower organisms degenerate. They are migrants to the core.

Especially worthy of remark are the traveling customs of the bourgeois and merchant classes. Simple to the extreme in everything they do, these people obey literally the Russian injunction : “ If you go for a day, take provisions for a week.” Even a short trip demands its hamper of edibles. The butler brings tea from the station-house, and the lighter meals, at least, are enjoyed en route. Nor is the business man less solicitous in the matter of his sleeping accommodation. As Russian hotel-keepers supply guests with a mere moiety of the means of nightly repose, — compel them, that is to say, to bring their own bed-clothes, — the native traveler practically carries his bed about with him. The metamorphosis of carriage-seats into sleeping-couches is thus easy. But slumber is difficult, even to tired passengers. The constant demand for “your ticket,” the perpetual crash of the closing door, make rest well-nigh impossible.

At one point alone can you be grateful to the conductor for disturbing you. A single spot displays the only scenery of the trip worthy of the name. It is a scape, moreover, not of land, but of river and sky, — a spectacle which is brightest in the absence of the sun, — and it catches the eye of the wakeful passenger on any clear summer night, when the train has just begun to cross the bridge over the Volkhov, in the government of Novgorod. Here he moves suspended between two heavens, almost alike in their brilliancy; for if the real sky lies overhead, with its fullness of stars softly shining, the very intervals between point and point dimly luminous, as broad and well-nigh bright a sky lies below, looking up with its thousand eyes through the mirror of the Volkhov. Midway over the flood the spectator forms the centre of two firmaments, perfect hemispheres, that have their meeting-line in the river’s bosom, at a depth far too profound to suggest the presence of any reflecting surface.

But the time passes swiftly, and each hour brings some new evidence of our nearness to the old capital. The conversation more and more busies itself with Moscow, and passengers exchange reminiscences of former visits to Russia’s city of churches. In the zealous talk and rising enthusiasm of the peasants, one may gather a whole philosophy of the affectionate interest with which Moscow is regarded by the people. Russia has a unique literature — partly in prose, partly in rhyme — of popular sayings about Moscow, and these the traveling agriculturists love to repeat, in a sort of patriotic competition, and with a view of determining which can recall the largest number. Some of these sayings relate to Moscow as a city, such as : “ Moscow was not built at once : it took ages to build Moscow ; ” “ Moscow was created by the ages, St. Petersburg by millions ; ” “ Moscow with its seven seigniories, — seven shepherds to one sheep ; ” “ Moscow, mother of all cities ; ” “ Hump-backed Moscow, built upon hills ; ” “ Who in Moscow ne’er Has been, he a beauty ne’er has seen ; ” and “ Moscow, white-stoned, golden-domed, hospitable, Orthodox, loquacious, Tsar-loving.” Others describe Moscow as an ecclesiastical centre : “ In Moscow there are forty times forty churches ; ” “ In Moscow every day is a holiday; ” “ Moscow matin chimes may be heard on the Vologda.” Among the general allusions are : “ Live, live, children, until you have seen Moscow; ” “It is high in the terem, but far to Moscow ; ” “ There is plenty of room in Moscow ; ” “ Moscow is not a suburb ; ” “ It is refreshing to live on the Don ; it is gay to live in Moscow ; ” “ Moscow is not obliged to imitate, follow, be led or influenced by, the Tsar, but the Tsar must be led by Moscow; ” “ To taste bread and salt in Moscow is like listening to sweet music ; ” “ Moscow is renowned for its virgins, its bells, and its bread rolls ; ” “ There is never a bad harvest, of bread in Moscow ; ” “ Moscow mud does not soil; ” “ In Moscow the bread rolls burn like tire.” A pessimistic vein is disclosed by such sayings as : “ Moscow loves money ; ” “ To one Moscow is a mother, to another a mother-in-law ; ” “ They calculate to the last copek in Moscow;” “Praise Moscow after you have seen it; ” “ Moscow delay ; ” “ Nothing is to be had as a gift in Moscow.” Four rhymes contain some of those touches of nature that make the whole world kin : “ Our native village is more beautiful than Moscow ; ” “ Moscow is a kingdom ; our village is a paradise ; ” “It is good to be in Moscow, but not like being at home ; ” and “ You will find everything in Moscow except your own father and mother.”

The real Moscow, as distinct from the Moscow of the proverb, the guidebook, and the literary description, stands alone among cities, as Russia stands alone among countries. The ground which it occupies is a vast circular plain, into the southern half of which the river Moskva penetrates like a blunt wedge. The city has a kreml, or fortress, for its centre, facing the watercourse, and around it have been built successive concentric rings of urban growth, representing in the order of recession the business, residential, and village portions of the old capital. That is to say, the church lies at the core of life in Moscow ; commerce comes next, bound to the ecclesiastical centre by the closest ties ; third in line stand housekeeping and pleasure ; last of all live huddled together the dependent and impoverished classes of one of the richest cities in the world. The parallel between the structural and the sociological order in Moscow is thus complete.

The best general view of the old capital is obtained from the tower of Ivan the Great, on the high ground of the Kreml. It is here, with an outlook over the walls of the fortress to the Sparrow Hills, that the spectator at all familiar with Russian literature recalls those charming lines of Glinka : —

Afar off, the eye takes in regions where Moscow begins to fall away into houseless country and open champaign ; nearer are the straggling outskirts, and just within them runs an endless thoroughfare of gardens, binding Moscow as with a peripheral belt of never - withering vegetation. The city proper is represented for the vision by a bewildering expanse of painted roofs, that swallow up the outlines of separate edifices in a flood of color. Only below and immediately around him can the observer study buildings in their totality, and even here the lines exposed are wholly those of the palace and the church. Viewed from the hills whence Napoleon caught his first glimpse of it, with its splotches of badly contrasted pigment, its tricky, theatrical appeals to the eye in vermilion, green, and blue, all softened by distance, Moscow is the “beauty” which the proverb declares it to be. But seen at close range the city is disappointing. It has neither the magnificence of St. Petersburg nor the multitudinous aspect of Paris : it is an inextricable complex of details, all jumbled together, without the slightest regard to proportion or harmonious grouping.

The Kreml bears a relation to Moscow proper somewhat like that in which the High Town stands to Edinburgh. It is not only the most elevated and least noisy quarter of the city; it is a garrisoned fortress, under the strictest military discipline. A soldier sentry, with loaded musket, has station in front of every building of importance ; strict watch is kept over visiting tourists ; nor is permission to look upon certain historical monuments, to which the entry is nominally free, often granted without a course of the most tedious preliminary circumlocution. The lavish care thus taken of the Kreml has another and worthier object than the mere preservation of costly things, for its whitish walls inclose memorials of the past of priceless value to the student of Russian history. It is not only that the Kreml pictures the ecclesiastical life of the people from the period of their conversion to Christianity ; it yields in palace, mansion, and museum glimpses of every stage of their domestic progress and national advance. The very stones tell a new tale in architecture ; the strange rooms, with their ancient tapestry and massive furniture, their striking windows and luxurious wall decorations, bring back the atmosphere of the semi - Byzantine terem, the rivalry of the grand princes, the struggle to save Moscow, the exploits of boyars and brigands, and the deeds of Ivan the Terrible. In glass cases are countless relics, such as the crown of Vladimir Monomakh, the sceptre of Alexei Mikhailovich, the throne of Ivan III., the flag of Prince Pozharsky, the swords of Minin, the bed of Peter, and the carriage of Boris Godunov. Then, passing from the Kreml to the adjacent Red Square, the visitor looks upon the Gate of the Saviour, beneath which it is still the custom to pass uncovered; the figures of Minin and Pozharsky, beloved of the peasant generation ; and the Vassily Blazhenny Cathedral, with its grouping of fantastic towers and cupolas.

Once leave the Kreml, and you are reminded of that early stage in the development of urban thoroughfares which finds its expression in so many old English and German towns. In primitive times, streets seem to have had an intense individuality of their own, not unlike the early egotism of human beings; each line of travel in a city starting where it would, going in the direction it liked best, and ending where it was pleased to stop, all without the slightest regard for the feelings of the other streets. But in these modern days, with the rise of the collective sense in man and the cultivation of the altruistic sentiments, the streets of cities, like the men living in them, have come to be conscious of each other’s existence. Instead of the lack of sympathy which, using the word in its Greek sense, marked their ancient relations, city streets now pass along side by side without collision; thus illustrating in the parallel lines of their symmetrical development the same regard for the rights of others as that which limits individual activities in the modern community.

Moscow’s streets belong largely to the old period. It is true that many of them, being concentric, are to that extent regular. Yet between these successive rings of roadway, encircling the Kreml at various distances therefrom, lie numberless crooked, winding, labyrinthine ways that would do honor to the oldest town in Western Europe. Nor is the suggested connection of such thoroughfares as these with human characteristics merely what people unaware of the part played in knowledge by analogies call a fancy. In Moscow, at any rate, there are grounds for asking whether this individualism of streets had not its origin in the imperfect solidarity of different sections of the urban population, — sections not yet bound closely together in the mutual relations of the later communal life. The Russians have shown little art as builders of cities, and I have sought to show elsewhere how straggling, disconnected, and incoherent a thing a native Russian city really is. Note especially the evidence of names given to the pathways of Moscow. I traversed, for example, the Street of the Cooks, the Place of the Apothecaries, the Field of Virgins, the Street of Carriages, the Place or Square of Newspapers, the Street of the Blacksmiths, the Thoroughfare of Gardens, the Way of the Hunters, the Passage of Onions, the Road of Church Bells, the Street of Caps, the Place of Drums, the Court of Pancakes, the Street of Peas, the Alley of Baths, and the Honey Cul - de - Sac. I also found such designations as the Square of Horses, the Place of Crows, the Alley of Swans, the Court of Bears, the Street of Fish, and other channels of traffic named after pigs, dogs, wolves, and “wild beasts.” Some of these names, of course, are peculiar to Moscow neither in the designation itself nor in the process by which it came into being. Yet the remainder, especially those descriptive of occupations, seem to indicate that early stage of the tendency to segregation out of which progress lifts fluent, changing human units without beingable to affect thoroughfares, that, once determined by urban growth, are established, as it were, for all time.

Moscow’s streets are truly picturesque in winter, when the cupolas put on their caps of snow, and the painted scales of the great wing of roofs stretched over the old capital grow white in the waxing frost. But in the summer months, even far into the autumn, the same thoroughfares suffer from the double scourge of oppressive heat and blinding dust. The pavements, moreover, being largely of wood, discharge the filaments of their decaying structure into the air, or, in rotting through moisture, rob the pedestrian of his foothold. Rain falls rarely, and water is so far from being available for use in the streets that it has to be supplied to hotels in barrels, and must in like manner be tubbed to the scenes of conflagrations. Even the frequent use of the droshky fails to suppress these disadvantages of traversing Moscow in the daytime. My own daily investigations were much aided by a habit of rising early ; in time, that is to say, for those abnormally matutinal services of the Greek Church to which the Orthodox are summoned by the “ matin chimes,” when the air is cool, and the thoroughfares are silent, and Moscow is mysterious by mere lack of the hurry and clamor of business. But the city’s repose lasts scarcely long enough for a foreigner’s early morning ramble. A full hour in advance of the costermonger at Covent Garden, the street-vender of a thousand specialties takes his stand in the squares and market-places ; the carts of incoming peasants, laden with the previous day’s produce, fresh from outlying villages and farms, throng every gate with their invading lines ; and then at innumerable points the droshky-driver, emerging from the place of his nightly sojourn, springs to the box of his vehicle, and drives amid the clatter of steed and wheel to the station which he has chosen as the base of his operations for the day. Later still begins the pilgrimage of Moscow’s business army from the residential districts to the commercial quarter, known as the Kitaigorod, — a procession which, full of the strangest contrasts both of attire and equipage, illustrates the extent to which ceremonial usages and habits of distinctive dress have been developed in Moscow. Position and wealth are to some extent distinguished by dress in all parts of Russia, but in the old capital the distinction rises — or falls — to the status of a livery. The chief of a business establishment not only attires himself in the costliest furs ; he drives officewards in a dashing troika, and dismounts with the air of an Eastern prince, — all of which means that inflection in ceremonial or dress, like inflection in language, tends to be thrown off at the two extremes, and to be insisted upon very strongly in its middle stage. Thus in the evolution of his manners of dress, the Moscow merchant is as far off, on the one hand, from the primitive chieftain, who has not yet learned how to express his rank in attire, as, on the other, from the American millionaire, who is not differentiated by dress from the humblest of those who render him service and owe him allegiance.

The Russian proverb which declares that “ in Moscow every day is a Sunday ” has a special verity for foreigners. The native is accustomed to these ubiquitous signs of worship; for the stranger they confer a holiday aspect upon the busiest thoroughfares. The plenitude of churches, whose bells are rung three or four times a day ; the throngs of worshipers marching to their devotions ; the perpetual mingling of monks and priests with pedestrians and sight-seers ; the frequent acts of religious devotion performed in public by rich and poor, quite regardless of the attentive curiosity of the un-Orthodox, — all seem to give an air of make-believe to the noisiest evidences of Moscow’s passion for commerce. On the other hand, the most sacred places of the old capital are daily handed over to trade’s itinerant host; and so searching is the process that you shall traverse the city from end to end without finding a single alley, place, or street not given up to buying and sale. Nay, the trafficker thrives, as we shall presently see, in the very churches themselves. It might thus seem that while in countries of the West men preserve the sanctities of religion by isolating them from contact with commerce, in Moscow the religious is yoked, Pegasuslike, with the secular, both being condemned to the meanest services in the interest of the tradesman, the priest, and the state. Yet Moscow simply illustrates the survival of a stage in the development of all peoples, wherein the life of religion is not merely inextricably mingled with the life of affairs, but has not yet been perceived as distinct therefrom.

In Moscow, every thought, like every thoroughfare, leads to a church. It is characteristic of the city that while more human beings die than are born within its walls, new temples of the Greek faith are yearly built that represent no increase of population whatever. The demand for ecclesiastical services in the old capital is permanently in excess of the supply. Hence it is that the Moscow priest in charge of a parish enjoys a state of well-being not attainable by the urban clergy in any other part of Russia. His town residence costs him nothing, and his resources enable him to maintain a separate establishment in the country. His income is largely what he likes to make it. The lighting of his church involves him in no expenditure, for the edifice is illuminated by the votive candles of the faithful. Living makes but small inroads upon his purse, for he receives almost daily substantial presents “ in kind.” His charges are regulated by no fixed scale. None the less conscientious is his attention to social distinctions : if he consent to marry some wretched peasant to his wretched sweetheart for half a dozen roubles, he will exact a hundred, or more likely a thousand, from the merchant bridegroom who has a place of business on the fashionable Kuznetsky Most. At baptisms and funerals, the Church shows the same discriminating sense of the circumstances of its devotees. During a single service, that of communion, money is looked for five times. The payments begin with the purchase of a candle, the unburnt remains of which become the perquisite of the priest; money is given on the entry of the participant’s name in the register ; another payment is made after the act of confession; a fee is received on the drinking of wine ; in finally blessing the communicants, the priest holds the crucifix over them with one hand, and stretches forth the other to receive their gifts. In ways like these the white clergy of Moscow often rise, in material resources, above the social position of the merchants who love to patronize them. Most prosperous of all is the priest who is fortunate enough to have a parish. For the priest’s assistants — the one a kind of curate, the other a kind of sexton — a much less happy lot is reserved. I have seen one of these impoverished churchmen trudging home, in full ecclesiastical vestments, with a watermelon under one arm, and a bareheaded, peasant-like wife on the other, one or two slatternly, olive-faced children bringing up the rear.

The great demand for priests in Russia is usefully correlated with that widespread desire which exists among the peasants to enter the service of the Church. Forms of address, at any rate, set up no distinction between the two classes, for the term batyushka, “ little father,” is not less applicable to the agriculturist than to the priest. If the peasant knows nothing of “ miserable books,” it is a rare experience to find sacerdotal acquirements that include a knowledge of geography and European politics. Very few of Moscow’s holy men speak or read French, in a country where an acquaintance with foreign tongues is remarkably common. Large numbers of priests do not know even Ecclesiastical Slavonic; in most cases, fluency during service in the liturgical language of the Greek Church may mean nothing more than a feat of skill in Russian mnemonics. A few stars of the first magnitude, it is true, shine in the firmament of this picturesque religion, but the majority of its lights are much too modest of effulgence to he noted of mankind. The priest in Moscow is simply adapted to his environment. While his surroundings remain what they are, he will continue to teach, not an intellectual religion, but an emotional and ceremonial one ; he will go on thinking much more of the condition and price of watermelons than of the nebular theory, and his interest in the “ mechanical equivalent of heat ” will still be determined by the amount of exertion which his services require of him on a hot summer or a dusty autumn day. But if his environment vary by ever so slight an amount; should his parishioners demand something more than the stereotyped formulas of the Greek Church ; suppose for a moment that the people among whom his lot is cast rise to higher levels of thought and faith, — then you shall see him respond to the change, and adapt himself anew to the surroundings. The questions to be asked are simply: Does the environment vary ? Is the priest being raised by his people ? Are the conditions which make him what he is engaged in a movement of ascent?

All of us remember that the Greek Church came to Russia in the time, so to speak, of her national childhood. Its appeal was largely, if not wholly, to the sensuous perceptions. For the eye were its Byzantine framework, its shrines and mosaics, and its gilded, often golden, cupolas, just as for the ear its gorgeous music and its ritual in an unknown tongue. Impression upon the heart, or rather the intellect, its services made little. That it could gather a cultured class of ecclesiastics into its official ranks was impossible. For a long period there were no institutions in which these priestly recruits could be trained. Even when the Church established ecclesiastical seminaries, it did so only to permit them to fall into a condition which forty or fifty years ago had become intolerable. The fund devoted by the authorities to their support had then been much diminished by peculation, while the food and clothing supplied to the pupils were at once wretched and inadequate. The depraved superiors added to the vice of greed the crime of outrageous cruelty, and by means of espionage, punishments, and tyrannical regulations kept the students under their charge in a state of scarcely veiled revolt. Amongst the inmates themselves an immorality well-nigh inconceivable prevailed. Since their reform in recent years, these seminaries have given better account of themselves. But they still foster the same spirit of negation and of opposition to authority which characterized them five decades ago. On the one hand, we see them training up for positions in the state Church the most loyal and zealous adherents of the dual system in Russia; on the other, these same institutions, in nursing youth destined in after years to join the ranks of the discontented and disloyal, develop the dragon’s teeth that, sown in a thousand places of darkness and misery, are to answer each year’s political punishments with the dread irony of armed men. Perhaps a third of the domestic enemies of the Tsar are youth who have left the ecclesiastical seminaries without passing into the service of the Church. Some of the most remarkable figures that Russia has produced spent a part of their lives in preparing to become priests. Pomyalovsky, Dobrolyubov, and Chernishevsky were all seminarists.

I must confirm from observation much that has been written concerning the unpopularity of the priesthood. These holy men are not beloved of the people. Their avarice is proverbial, and the popular epithets which perpetuate the belief in it do them little injustice. It is still considered unlucky — even amongst the classes by whom their services are most in demand — to meet one of them in the street; impending rencontres are usually avoided by abrupt crossing of the thoroughfare.² The moral influence exerted by priests is notoriously small. They are rarely admitted to the houses of the nobles and land-owners ; rich merchants, on the other hand, as well as merchants who hope to become rich, eagerly purchase their favors. The frequent complaint made of insobriety within the Church is only too well founded. A few years ago the Golos drew attention to this vice of the clergy by publishing illustrative cases, gathered from time to time by its correspondents in various parts of Russia. The revelations made were regarded as " scandalizing,’ but it was the Golos that died a natural death ; the evil of clerical intemperance came forth from the agitation unscathed.

Only an unworthy student of Russian history can sneer at the Greek Church, as only a shallow lover of science can declaim against religion. When the true nature of this “ quest of the highest ” comes to be understood, there will no longer be room for doubt regarding the function of ecclesiastical systems like that enthroned at Moscow. Even now this Byzantine ceremonial in Slav surroundings — this faith of the crescent dominated by the cross — has aspects that affect a sensitive nature with a part, at least, of the charm of its appeal to the Orthodox mind. I remember thinking of this, one warm summer afternoon, when, as I passed through the southwest corner of the Kreml, a crowd streamed by me on its way to the Assumption Cathedral. Following the march, I pushed my way to a position in the edifice whence I could command a fairly unhindered view of the interior, and learned that only the attractions of a special service could have so filled the church an hour in advance of ordinary vespers. The congregation consisted largely of peasants and artisans, of both sexes, as well as of shopkeepers and merchants; yet all stood shoulder to shoulder, without the slightest regard to precedence or place. The people were packed so closely together that even a panic could have brought no injury to the throng, since it was impossible for any one to fall far enough to be trampled upon. All the more remarkable was the activity shown by the congregation, for the hour of waiting was spent in buying candles, and setting them up to burn before the images of favorite saints. The candles were displayed at a table near the main exit, and had each worshiper been obliged to make the purchase himself, but few offerings of piety could have been disposed of. The difficulty was ingeniously overcome. Money was passed from hand to hand until it reached the table, and the returning candle followed in the same track, if in a reversed direction. Distinct lines of transmission were thus set up in the throng, to disappear and give place to others when one set of bargains had been consummated, and when, thanks to the willingness of the people, the candles ordered had been finally hung before the icons for which they were destined.

The service was wholly choral and ceremonial: boys and men chanted at intervals ; in the pauses of singing the officiating priest read the lessons of the day from the liturgy. Only once was the monotony of three hours’ chanting and reading interrupted. A sudden commotion occurred in the crowd, and then, without other warning, I became aware of an imposing figure seated on the throne of the cathedral; that is to say, in the centre of the throng, and elevated above it. The face was thin, and had a somewhat ascetic look ; yet it wore an expression of mild benignity, and was, withal, the most intellectual Russian countenance it had ever been my lot to look upon. The people acted as if delirious with joy in the presence of their pastor, and when, at the close of the service, the Metropolitan of Moscow — for he it was — endeavored to leave the cathedral, the whole throng seemed to precipitate itself forward in an effort to come near him. I saw him struggle for a few moments with the crowd, and then surrender unconditionally. For a time he held out one hand ; this was fought for, and, when captured, kissed with the same affectionate zeal by women and by men. Two hands soon became necessary to meet the demand, and these were held out rapidly to right and left, the scene continuing until the assistant priests had succeeded in making a lane through which the Metropolitan could reach the door of the cathedral.

It is not unnatural that power so tremendous as this should have been misused. But Moscow is something more than an ecclesiastical centre. It has educational facilities not always possessed by cities blessed with free municipalities and the right of the popular vote. In addition to a famous university and many colleges and schools, public and private, the old capital maintains a Historical Museum, a Polytechnic Museum, a Museum of Ethnology, a Museum of Art and Industry, a Museum devoted to the Science of Pedagogy, and a Museum of the Practical Sciences. Five public picture-galleries provide art entertainment, and five public gardens open spaces for the people of the city, while for the study of natural history facilities are supplied by a zoölogical and a botanical garden.

None the less must it be said that, for the moment, industry, not education, is the true antithesis of ecclesiasticism in Moscow. A slow transformation is remoulding the life as well as the aspect of the old capital. In amongst the cupolas the darker outlines of chimneys are beginning to appear; the soot-besmeared artisan already jostles the merchant in the finest thoroughfares. By daytime Moscow’s canopy is darkened prematurely by settling clouds of carbon smoke ; after nightfall the same canopy flashes back the glare of flaming furnaces. Streets that once held only the habitations of the rich are now being rebuilt with the domiciles of artisans ; villages that a few years ago surrounded Moscow with an outer ring of gardens are now noisy with the play of hammers and the hissing of steam-engines.

Industry is no foe of the Church, nor is the Church hostile to industry. But there is something in each which is incompatible with the interests of the other. There was once a Russia to the circumstances of which the ceremonial usages of the Greek faith were, to say the least, not ill adapted. It was the Russia of the native manufactures, — of the period when, without the aid of machinery, the people produced all they needed with unaided hands. No check was then placed upon their habits or occupations by the frequency of fête or holy days. But in the Russia of the modern and industrial epoch, when the country is daily decreasing her dependence on foreign markets for the products of the mill, the forge, the furnace, and the factory ; when the industrial needs of the people have dotted the land with manufactories from end to end, the Church holiday system, with its encouragement of idleness and intemperance, has become intolerable. The artisan who clings to the usages of his creed surrenders that capacity for regular work upon which his chief value for industrial operations depends ; the workman who would remain valuable to his manufacturing employer must neglect his duty to the Church. A conflict of interests such as this can have but one issue ; already thousands of the Russian Orthodox are laying at the feet of the capitalist what they have come to feel cannot reasonably be demanded of them by the priest. The Greek Church itself is half moved to compromise with the growing army of its members, who, belonging to industry, yet cling to religion; and thus the prospect of healthy change, faint and distant though it be, seems to open up thus late in the day for an establishment that no reform has touched for a thousand years.

Now a glance backwards over the way we have come. To sojourn in Moscow, and find a profounder meaning in one’s surroundings than any which can be suggested by the gilded domes of churches and the painted roofs of domicile and palace and tower; to wander through the treasure-houses of the old capital with an eye for something far other than crowns bespangled with diamonds, worn by princes centuries dead, or costly armor in which the boyars once fought, or stately carriages wherein Tsars and Tsaritsas performed their imperial journeys ; to stand over the sacred coffins of ten generations of Russian royalty, and yet feel a greater chasm yawningbetween one and the sight-seer at one’s side than that which separates both from the oldest sarcophagus which the priest shows at a rouble a head, — to do these, things is not to take delight, but to be profoundly sad at heart, if not miserable, in Moscow.

St. Petersburg is European, and half the things which pain one there are felt to be in some sort of association with the evils and vices of the West. But Moscow has its own miseries, and they are so intensely Russian, so characteristic of that vaster Moscow of which the old capital is merely the tiny centre, that in becoming sensible of them one shudders, not for a community merely, but for a whole people. The contrasts which life offers in St. Petersburg are contrasts mainly between things which it is scarcely just to compare, — between a well-being which is foreign and a want that is native ; but in Moscow wealth is elder brother to poverty, yet stands divided from it by a chasm as impassable as it is merciless. There is a distinct alliance of roughness and semi-culture between the rich merchant, who does business daily in the White Town, and the wretched street-vender, whom he passes on his way a dozen times ; yet the two are farther apart than the poorest and the richest classes in Western Europe. Moreover, poverty is so unspeakably miserable in Moscow that it seems to be the characteristic rather of a distinct species of the animal man than of any particular layer of the population. The streets daily yield figures which can only on general principles of anthropology be called human. The eye disentangles a face from these moving masses of rags but slowly and painfully ; unless the inspection is at long range, the nose itself is too apt to protest.

The Russian summer calls innumerable peasant beggars and country paupers to Moscow. In the daytime they explore the city from gate to gate, halting from time to time to beg alms, or munch the fragments of black bread which form the chief spoils of their diurnal quest. Many women of this class are young and robust, fresh from the labors of the field; but some are old, infirm, haggard. All trudge along with the aid of a staff, and all wear a rude canvas bag tied around the neck. At night, long after the last vesper has died away, when the White Town is deserted, and the suburban residences are gay with lights, with music, and with the laughter of happy men and women, this vast army of the penniless and the miserable seeks its nocturnal repose Heaven alone knows where, — on the forsaken field of the day’s markets in the open air, on the steps of churches and cathedrals, or in the quadrangles and courts of palaces and public buildings. To be unutterably wretched, and yet to be a nightly sojourner in the “ outer courts of heaven; ” to be poor, and yet to fall asleep with only the thickness of a wall separating one from some of the most useless and costly accumulations of treasure in Europe, the conversion of which into money would furnish the means for banishing acute poverty from Russia altogether, — such experiences as these are the lot of thousands to whom Moscow is less a place of pilgrimage than a centre of hot, weary, dusty life, a focus of burning despair.

The very bells in Moscow suggest the impression made by many visits to Russian cities, — the impression of some strange complex of sociological conditions, the unraveling whereof discloses new and more intricate entanglements still; of some mighty power of specialized manners, unyielding as the coercive force of magnetized steel; and withal of some awful tragedy bending over individual and collective humanity with a destiny of iron. In these silver tinklings, in this multitudinous clamor of sounding metal, in the sonorous, pervasive, vibrating boom, running like a ground-swell through all the higher notes, you listen but to the clumsy play of some cruel Titan on that instrument of many strings, — rude, it may be, but wonderfully sensitive, — the Russian heart. Yet these very discords are the delight of the native imagination, and to a faith deep as mine they are the promise of harmonies to come.

Edmund Noble.