284 THROUGH RUSSIA ON A MUSTANG. 



" advanced ideas," etc., of the age ; and of those who 

 bare heads before churches and ikons, one half do it 

 as a matter of policy and the others because it is less 

 trouble to drift with the stream than to stand still in 

 it, and altogether too much of a strain to think of 

 swimming against it. 



Apart from this Voltairian fringe, the mass of the 

 Russian people are passing through much the same 

 moral and religious transformation that Western 

 Europe passed through in the Middle Ages. Allowing 

 for a difference in social conditions, the Empire of the 

 Czar presents a similar picture of splendid religious 

 edifices towering over the habitations of squalid 

 poverty ; of large monasteries full of treasures of gold, 

 silver, and jewels, rich abbots and fat monks, standing 

 in the midst of the broadest and fairest portions of 

 the land. The Russian moujik of to-day is about as 

 full of superstitions and the dread of the Evil One as 

 was the villein of the West in the fourteenth century, 

 and his conceptions of religion are leavened, as those 

 of the villein were, with the lingering remains of 

 paganism. 



His creed is largely composed of superstitions and 

 demonology. To him the holy ikon, that is never ab- 

 sent from his humble abode, is a mysterious, living 

 thing, representing the saint, after whom it is pat- 

 terned, not only in form, but in spirit and power. 



St. Nicholas is the moujik's favorite saint, and a 

 " Nicholai ikon ' is found in nearly every peasant's 

 house in Russia. It consists of a small picture of the 

 saint, a figure holding in one hand a church and in 

 the other a sword, set in a deep box-like frame, and 



