232 FORESTRY IN LITHUANIA. 



cityj; a second dip divides the convent of Feodosie from 

 that of his fellow-saint. These convents, nobly planned, 

 and strongly built, take rank among the finest piles in 

 Eastern Europe. Domes and pinnacles of gold surmount 

 each edifice ; and every wall is pictured with legends from 

 the lives of saints. The ground is holy; more than a 

 hundred hermits lie in the catacombs, and crowds of holy 

 men lie mouldering in every niche of the holy wall. 

 Mouldering ! I crave their pardons. Holy men can 

 never rust and rot ! The purity of the flesh in death 

 is evidence of the purity of the flesh in life ; and 

 saints are just as incorruptible of body as of soul ! In 

 Anton's convent you are shown the skull of St. Vladimer ; 

 that is to say, a velvet pall in which his skull is said to 

 be wrapped and swathed. You are told that the flesh is 

 pure, the skin uncracked, and the odour sweet. A line 

 of dead bodies fills the underground passages and lanes 

 each body in a niche of the rock ; and all these martyrs 

 of the faith are said to be like Vladimer also fresh and 

 sweet ! . . . Fifty thousand pilgrims, chiefly Ruth- 

 enians, from the populous provinces of Podolia, Kiev, and 

 Volhinia, come in summer to these shrines. 



' When Kiev received her freedom from the Tartar begs 

 she found herself by the chance of war a city of Polonia, 

 not of Muscovy ; a m'ember of the western, not of the 

 eastern, section of her race. Kiev had never been Russ, 

 as Moscow was Russ ; a rude barbaric town, with crowds 

 of traders and rustics, ruled by a Tartarised court ; and 

 now that her lot was cast with the more liberal and 

 enlightened west, she grew into a yet more Oriental 

 Prague. For many reigns she lay open to the arts of 

 Germany and France; and when she returned to Russia, 

 in the time of Peter the Great, she was not alone the 

 noblest jewel in his crown, but a point of union, nowhere 

 else to be found, for all the Sclavonic nations in the 

 world. 



' As an inland city, Kiev has the finest site in Russia. 

 Standing on a range of bluffs, she overlooks a splendid 



