I found the monkish institutions by no means liked among the upper classes in Russia. I have frequently heard them say, “Those lazy monks and nuns, who pass all their days in idleness, ought to be abolished; they are a burthen to the community, and only eat up the bread of the industrious!” Yet those very people in their old age would, most likely, be continually making rich presents to them for their prayers, by which they hope to render more smooth their own path to heaven. There are some sects of the Greek Church severely restricted by the Russian government. When I was at Twer a whole religious society, with their superior at their head, were arrested and put under judgment. I could not make out what their peculiar tenets were; but they were accused of shocking crimes and gross ignorance, perverting the doctrines of Christianity as a pretence for vile actions more becoming Indian idolaters than the followers of Christ. Dresses of black stuff embroidered with hieroglyphics and mysterious symbols, veils something like those worn by the familiars of the Spanish Inquisition, which have two holes for the eyes, together with all the etcetera of their degraded superstition, were brought to the governor’s house as so many proofs against them. I believe the sisterhood were dispersed, and placed in different convents belonging to the orthodox Church. Notwithstanding the excessive severity of the climate, hermits still exist in the immense and almost untrodden forests of the interior, who are held in the same estimation as saints by the population. A Russian noble informed me that in the province of Kastroma a curious subterraneous chapel had been discovered on the estate next to his: it had been dug out by the hands of one of these fanatics, and his skeleton was found lying before the altar, as if he had expired in the midst of his prayers. None of the peasantry of the district had ever seen any person answering to his description, nor was there any tradition concerning him extant; he must have lived and died unremarked and unknown. Probably he was some escaped criminal or deserter, or perhaps a monk who had become deranged with distorted ideas of devotion, and was ambitious of aspiring to the honour of canonization. But how these recluses can possibly exist during the intense severity of a northern winter, where they can find the food to support them, or how they escape becoming the prey of the numerous wolves and bears with which the country abounds, is incomprehensible to me. The Greek Church permits the New Testament to be read by the laity, with the exception of the Revelation of St. John, but the Old Testament is withheld. Children are taught religion by the priests, who are engaged, just as the masters of languages are, to give a lesson once or twice a week, for which they are also paid. CHAPTER XI.