The Russian cross has eight points. To the Latin cross are added the titulus, and a lower diagonal crosspiece which is assumed to be a rest for the feet. _Post hoc, propter hoc_, and that this rest slants is said to be due to the fact that Christ was lame; others think that its purpose is merely to give the idea of perspective of the hill Golgotha on which the cross was placed, and others as indicating the earthquake, whilst those versed in mystic symbolism will recognise a totally distinct signification.[B] To these last too, the accepted explanations of the crescent from which the cross rises will be insufficient. It was common in Russia prior to the Mongol occupation, so is not the result of placing crosses upon mosques, or intended to denote the subjugation of Mahommedanism to Christianity. More probable is the explanation, that in ancient pictures the Virgin is shown standing upon the crescent, and the cross was later placed by the Russian ecclesiastics to denote that the cross issues from the Mother of God. Maxim, the Greek, in the sixteenth century, declared that the crescent represented Upsilon, the initial of [Greek: hupsos], and so is emblematical of the uplifting of the cross; but if its application as a sign of Christian dogma is open to various constructions, all will at once recognise the sign as one of the most ancient and general of mystic symbols. [B] The Russian cross is derived from the old eastern form of the Greek letter _xi_. The ecclesiastical art of Russia is of a different nature to that of any school of the west. The ikons, or sacred pictures, must be exact copies of the originals, thus the practice supports Gibbon's contention that the religious value of a sacred image depends for its efficacy upon its resemblance to the original.[C] In Moscow there are several pictures of the Saviour "not made with hands," being in that respect, and that only, similar to the Veronica and the miraculous image of Edessa. They are not alike, and their origin is not known, but it is conjectured that the initials [Greek: O T H], on the nimbus, have been wrongly interpreted as the initials of _ot, otsa, Nebesnavo_, which means "From Our Father on High" instead of _On, Otets, Nash_--"He is Our Father." The Greek characters were little known in Russia, and one of the pictures has this legend in Greek [Greek: O.Ô.N.] In the same connection it is worth noting that our I.H.S. is a misreading into Latin of [Greek: IÊS], the Greek contraction of [Greek: IÊSous], where the long e was mistaken for a capital H, and the dash above it developed into a cross. The ordinary ikons are restricted to fixed types; the artist therefore has never needed to create, only to reproduce. There are no Russian Madonnas, all are replicas of pictures brought from Greece or Byzantium; "the ikon painter knows but one costume, for all places and all times it changeth not; tradition fixes the form of the head, the pose, the proportion, the