show that the number of domes--some churches have seventeen, if not more--is immaterial, since all should be so arranged as to increase the importance of the central one. Those in which all are equal in size and height--as the roof over the chapels of the Terem--are quite exceptional. The chief modification arose from the necessity of preserving the structure and its valued contents from the great cold of the winter and the excessive moisture of the summer. To overcome the first difficulty the church was surrounded with a gallery; to obviate the second the floor of the church raised to a higher storey; when the two were combined as in many churches of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, some elaboration of proaulion and _Kriltso_ was natural. The best specimens of this class are the churches of St Nicholas of the Great Cross on the Ilyinka, and of the Assumption on the Pokrovka; the ordinary design is that of the porches and approach to Vasili Blajenni, and of the Blagovieshchenski Sobor before the ground was raised to its present level. The belfry, a somewhat late comer to the Russian church, was usually a separate building adjacent to, but not a component part of, the church itself. When masonry superseded wood, the old designs were for the most part retained: so possibly the only other important point of general application is the subsequent employment of the tapering spire--and its modifications of superposed arches, etc.--to support the dome and cross, instead of the cylindrical shaft peculiar to Russian architecture, which last was evidently derived from round towers of very remote origin. The windows are small and unimportant--often mere oblong slits in the wall--and, though the accepted form admits of little modification towards the elaboration of elegance and grace in the design, and the decoration is limited by the ecclesiastical objection to carved figures--and climatic conditions which preclude the employment of projecting mouldings and all fine work in high relief--the brilliant colouring and mural decorations of plane surfaces convey an impression of richness, which, combined with the absence of the usual and conspicuousness of strange decorations, magnify the whole, in many instances, into the resemblance of whatever the imagination may picture as most ornate and brilliant.