attitudes and the attributes." Most are produced by monks and probationers who follow the instructions given in a tenth century MS. by Dionysius of Mount Athos. Rigorously it is only the features of the saint that must be exactly reproduced; in practice it is customary to cover all but the face and hands with thin metal--gold, silver, or gilt, and to ornament the setting lavishly. In the seventeenth century, the golden age of Muscovite ecclesiasticism, there were several branches of ikon painting, not differing sufficiently to warrant the appellation of "schools." These were known as the Imperial or Court style; the Village, the Strogonov, and the Monastic. Novgorod would have the faces yellow; the Strogonov insisted upon dark green--an introduction from Byzantium, and sometimes known as Khorsunski. Black virgins are not unknown--the result of time upon impure pigments; those with three small scratches on the face are copies of the Iberian Mother of God, a twelfth century ikon of the Virgin. Graven images are not allowed in the Russian Church, being held to be a violation of the second commandment. The only exception is that of St Nicholas. Holy Statues were abolished by order of the Patriarch Philaret, and when these were removed from the churches all went well until hands were laid upon one of the representatives of the patron Saint; no force could stir that; where, by extraordinary means, the statue was broken from the pedestal, the image of the saint reappeared. This is the only figure seen in high relief, and is usually made with the model of a church in his hand. The popularity of the saint may be estimated from the fact, that at one time there were as many as 118 churches in Moscow dedicated to St Nicholas. [C] "By a slow though inevitable progression the honours of the original were transferred to the image; the merit and effect of a copy depends upon its resemblance with the original."--_Gibbon,--Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, chapter xlix.