The most representative cathedral of Russia is quite a modern one—that of St. Vladimir at Kief. It is much worth entering. A wonderful interior painted by the marvellous Russian painters, Vasnetsof and Nesterof—mediæval artists alive in the present, the eyes of the dead Middle Ages opening again after a thousand years’ sleep. All the walls and the pillars of St. Vladimir are painted by these wonderful artists. At the north by the font is a vast representation of the birth of Russian Christianity, the stepping of the army of King Vladimir down into the waters of the Dnieper to their first baptism. And away high over the altar in a background of dark blue is painted Vasnetsof’s majestical Mother and Child, whence naturally the congregation raises its eyes in adoration and aspiration. In the choir at the west is painted the story of Adam and Eve and their sin, and at the east is the wonderful Crucifixion and Resurrection, human birth balanced by spiritual birth, Paradise lost by Paradise regained. On the columns of the church are immense figures of the warrior-saints of Russia, the champions of Russian Christendom. When on Easter Eve this wonderful modern cathedral is full of all manner of Russians, you have a complete and national picture—another vision of Holy Russia. It is not necessary to pray or to fall upon one’s knees. It is only necessary to exist in the great choric throng and to look over a thousand heads to the awful and yet altogether lovely vision of the Virgin to feel one’s heart almost stand still and one’s soul become rapt in wonder, awestruck, thrilled. You wish to stretch arms above the head and give yourself completely to the spirit of beauty, the Godhead. You lose the sense of the Ego, the separated individual, you are aware of being part of a great unity praising God. You cease to be _man_ and become the _church_, the bride of Christ. The walls of all churches in Russia are painted all over with immense pictures. This is dimly thought by Western people to be in bad taste. But that is because the distance between the Western and Eastern churches of Christ is as yet unbridged. The Russian has the child-soul, the peasants get to heaven where we fail, because they are “as little children.” And the children like the pictures. Older and more staid folk would not perhaps have thought of them. But they only need to go through the spiritual experience of praying in a Russian church surrounded by the painted cloud of witnesses to wish to be such children, and to feel that the child-idea of painting the walls with the pictures of the heavenly host is a perfect felicity.