[Illustration: VASSILI-BLAGENNOI (ST. BASIL THE BLESSED), MOSCOW.] What adds still more to the fantastic effect of Vassili-Blagennoi, is that it is coloured with the most incongruous tones which nevertheless produce a harmonious effect that charms the eye. Red, blue, apple-green and yellow meet here in all portions of the building. Columns, capitals, arches and ornaments are painted with startling shades which give a strong relief. On the plain spaces of rare occurrence, they have simulated divisions or panels framing pots of flowers, rose-windows, wreathing vines, and chimaeras. The domes of the bell-towers are decorated with coloured designs that recall the patterns of India shawls; and, displayed thus on the roofs of the church, they recall the kiosks of the Sultans. The same fantastic genius presided over the plan and ornamentation of the interior. The first chapel, which is very low and in which a few lamps glimmer, resembles a golden cavern; unexpected stars throw their rays across the dusky shadows and make the stiff images of the Greek saints stand out like phantoms. The mosaics of St. Mark's in Venice alone can give an approximate idea of the effect of this astonishing richness. At the back, the iconostas looms up in the twilight shot through with rays like a golden and jewelled wall between the faithful and the priests of the sanctuary. Vassili-Blagennoi does not present, like other churches, a simple interior composed of several naves communicating and cut at certain points of intersection after the laws of the rites followed in the temple. It is formed of a collection of churches, or chapels, in juxtaposition and independent of each other. Each bell-tower contains a chapel, which arranges itself as it pleases in this mass. The dome is the terminal of the spire or the bulb of the cupola. You might believe yourself under the enormous casque of some Circassian or Tartar giant. These calottes are, moreover, marvellously painted and decorated in the interior. It is the same with the walls covered with those barbaric and hieratic figures, the traditional designs for which the Greek monks of Mount Athos have preserved from century to century, and which, in Russia, often deceive the careless observer regarding the age of a building. It is a peculiar sensation to find yourself in these mysterious sanctuaries, where personages familiar to the Roman Catholic cult, mingle with the saints peculiar to the Greek Calendar, and seem in their archaic Byzantine and constrained appearance to have been translated awkwardly into gold by the childish devotion of a primitive race. These images that you view across the carved and silver-gilt work of the iconostas, where they are ranged symmetrically upon the golden screen opening their large fixed eyes and raising their brown hand with the fingers turned in a symbolic fashion, produce, by means of their somewhat savage, superhuman and immutable traditional