A year after my journey to Kief
I travelled through the Tyrol on my way from the Ammergau Passion
Play. The whole of this district abounds in frescoes, many being on
the external walls of private dwellings. This village art of the
Bavarian Highlands, though often the handiwork of simple artisans,
puts to shame both the external and the internal wall-paintings at
Kief, Troitza, and the Kremlin. Yet this contrast between Russia
and Southern nations does not arise so much from the higher ability
of the artists, as from the superiority of the one school to the
other school. The pictorial arts fostered by the Western Church
are fundamentally true, while the arts which the Eastern Church has
patronized and petrified are essentially false and effete.
The scene which strikes the eye on entering this parti-coloured
Cathedral of the Assumption, though strange, is highly picturesque.
To this holy shrine are brought the halt, the lame, and the blind,
as to the moving of the waters. Some press forward to kiss the
foot of a crucifix, others bow the head and kiss the ground, a
servile attitude of worship, which in the Greco-Russian Church
has been borrowed from the Mohammedans.
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