The foreign civilization which was forced upon them has never penetrated the mass of the people.  The national peculiarity has remained complete in language, manners, and customs, in a highly remarkable municipal constitution, the freest and most independent existing anywhere; and, finally, in their architecture.  The last can, of course, only be applied to the churches.  In Russia nearly everything is new.  What is older than a hundred years is looked upon as an antiquity.  The Russian dwelling-house is of wood, and therefore never reaches that age, unless, like the one of Peter the Great, it be encased by a stone one.  Even the palaces of the Emperor are new, and only here in Moscow can be found a ruin of the old Dworez of the Czars.  There are churches in existence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (a great age for Russia), and the strictly conservative spirit of the priesthood has been instrumental in retaining the same style of architecture in the later buildings.

The St. Sophia, in Constantinople, is the model upon which all Russian churches are built.  It was imitated everywhere, but never equalled, not even by St. Mark’s in Venice.  There was lack both of material and skill to build an arch with a span of one hundred and twenty-six feet.  What could not be accomplished in width was attempted in height.  The domes became narrow and tall, like towers.  The rough stone, handled without art, rendered clumsy pillars and thick walls necessary, in which the windows, like embrasures, are cut narrow and deep.  The brightest light falls through the windows in the thinner wall which supports the cupolas.  Nearly all churches are higher than they are long and wide.  The clumsy tetragonal pillars contract the already narrow space.  One has nowhere a free view, and a mystic twilight reigns everywhere.  The most famous Russian churches can only accommodate as many hundreds as a Gothic cathedral can thousands.  It is true most of them were built by Italian masters; but the latter were obliged to conform to the rules and forms already in use.

Since the architectonic conditions were unfavorable to the creation of a magnificent whole, an attempt was made to ornament the individual parts with brilliancy and magnificence.  Not contented to gild the churches inside and out, the floors were paved with half-precious stones, and the pictures (of no artistic value) were covered with jewels, diamonds, and pearls.  Only the faces and hands are painted; the garments, crown, and all else are plated with silver, gold, and jewels.

Sculpture is entirely prohibited, as far as representing the human form is concerned; but they do not hesitate to represent God himself on canvas.  The gilt background is of itself disadvantageous for the carnation of the pictures, and added to this are the long-drawn outlines of the Byzantine and old German schools, without the genuine feeling of the latter.  Gigantic scarecrows gaze down from the cupolas, meant to represent the Virgin Mary, Christ, St. John, or God the Father.  A Russian buys no holy picture that is not quite black or faded out.  A lovely Madonna of Raphael, or a fine Sebastian of Correggio, does not seem to him expressive.  His creed needs the obscurity of his church—­the clouds of incense which at every mass veil the mysterious movements of the priests.