98 
MOSCOW. 
CHAP. 
V. 
' * 
various magnitude. It has great celebrity, 
from the numberless miracles it is supposed 
to have wrought, in healing the sick, restoring 
sight to the blind, and showering down favours 
of all kinds upon its worshippers. Now, sup- 
posing only four persons to present themselves 
every minute before this picture, (and some- 
times fifty in the same instant may be observed 
opposite the shrine,) no less a number than ten 
thousand eight hundred and eighty persons will 
be found to visit it in the short space of twelve 
hours. It would be indeed a miracle, if, out 
of this number, one or two did not occasionally 
experience relief, either from sickness of body, 
or from sorrow, or in consequence of any other 
wished-for change : and, whenever this happens, 
if only once in thirty days, (which would be 
to reckon one only but of eighty-six thousand 
four hundred persons, not counting the nightly 
visitants,) the noise of it is circulated far and 
wide ; the story itself exaggerated ; and the 
throng of votaries thereby increased. Upon 
such ground an ideot might raise as vast a 
superstructure of ignorance and credulity as 
any even Russia itself has witnessed. The 
picture of a Saint found accidentally in the 
street; human bones dug up in a forest; a 
dream; some casual and rude representation 
of a cross ; a lusus naturce (as in the colours 
