"There are none of those spots where nature, art, time, and history have combined to catch the heart with a charm in which beauty, association, and even decay are indistinguishably mingled; where art has added the picturesque to the beauty of nature; and where time has made magic the handiwork of art; and where history has peopled the spot with countless phantoms, and cast over everything the strangeness and glamour of her spell. "Such places you will find in France and in England, all over Italy, in Spain and in Greece, but not in Russia. "A country of long winters and fierce summers, of rolling plains, uninterrupted by mountains and unvariegated by valleys. "And yet the charm is there. It is a fact which is felt by quantities of people of different nationalities and races; and it is difficult if you live in Russia to escape it; and once you have felt it you will never be free from it. The aching melancholy song which, Gogol says, wanders from sea to sea throughout the length and breadth of the land, will for ever echo in your heart and haunt the recesses of your memory."[5] [Illustration: _The Metropolitan of Moscow._] FOOTNOTES: [2] Just as I go to press Mr. Lloyd George has told the House of Commons that productivity is already increased 30 per cent. in Russia. [3] The Hon. Maurice Baring. [4] Wallace, _Russia_, vol. i, p. 129. [5] _Russian Review_ for February, 1914. CHAPTER IV THE CLERGY The Russian Church is a daughter of the Byzantine Church--the youngest daughter--and only dates from the close of the tenth century, when monks came to Kieff from Constantinople during the reign of Vladimir. There would be little "preaching of the Cross of CHRIST," I should fancy, as the great means of conversion for that great mass of servile population. We are told, indeed, that Vladimir gave the word and they were baptized by hundreds at a time in the River Dnieper, and that no opposition was offered to the new religion as the old Nature worship had only very lightly held them, and had no definite priesthood. The new religion, however, soon acquired a very strong hold upon the people of all classes, and the power and influence of the Church grew just as the State gained ever-new importance; the power of the Patriarch increasing as that of the Tsar increased, until in a comparatively short time the Orthodox Church stood alone, and owned no Eastern supremacy on the one hand, nor yielded to the approaches of the Roman Papacy on the other. By the end of the sixteenth century the other Eastern Patriarchs recognized and accepted the Patriarchate of Moscow as being an independent one, and fifth of the Patriarchates of the East.