The
ethnology, the physical geography, the climate, the religion, the
products of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so far as they are
peculiar to Russia, will some day become reflected into the national
art. It is true that the painter may occasionally feel a want of
colour, the costumes of the peasant are apt to be dull and heavy, yet
not unfrequently rags and tatters bring compensation by picturesque
outlines and paintable surface-textures. At Kief, however, the traveller
is sufficiently south and east to fall in with warm southern hues
and Oriental harmonies, broken and enriched, moreover, among the
lower orders by that engrained dirt which I have usually noted as
the special privilege and prerogative of pilgrims in all parts of
the world. The use of soap would seem to be accounted as sacrilege
on religious sentiment. What with dust, and what with sun, the
wayfarers who toil up the heights leading to the holy hill have
gained a colour which a Murillo would delight in. The face and
neck bronzed by the hot sun tell out grandly from a flowing mass
of hair worthy of a patriarch.
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