Russia in 1839 -Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia

not cease repeating to me, with Italian loquacity, " Signor, creda à me, questa madonna fa dei miracoli, ma dei miraeoli veri, veri verissimi, non è come da noi altri; in questo paese tutti gli miracoli sono veri."

This Italian, preserving the ingenuous vivacity and the good temper of the people of his country in the empire of silence and reserve, amuses me.

A gossip in Eussia is a phenomenon, a rarity delightful to encounter, a thing that is missed every hour by the traveller, wearied with the tact and prudence of the natives of the country. To lead this man to talk, which is not difficult to accomplish, I risked a few doubts as to the authenticity of the miracles of his Virgin of Vivielski: had I denied the spiritual authority of the Pope, my Roman servant could not have been more shocked. In seeing a poor Catholic endeavouring to prove to me the supernatural power of a Greek painting, I thought that it is no longer theology that separates the two churches. The history of all the Christian nations teaches us that princes have known how, in aid of their political schemes, to avail themselves of the obstinacy, the ßubtilty, and the logic of the priests, to envenom religious controversies.

In the small square to which the vaulted passage leads, stands a group in bronze, executed in a very bad soi-disunt classic style. I could have fancied myself in a second-rate sculptor's studio at the Louvre during the Empire. The group represents, under the figure of two Romans, Minine and Pojarski, the liberators of Russia, from which country they drove the Poles at the commencement of the seventeenth