Scandalous scenes of this description have been abolished in the established church by the reforms of the Patriarch Nicon, alluded to above, but something very like it may still be witnessed in the churches of the _Raskolniks_, who have separated from the established church on account of those reforms. These people often bring their own images to the churches to pray before them, and it frequently happens amongst the boys who worship in this way, that some of them, perceiving that their neighbour has a finer image than their own, they steal it from him, substituting that which belongs to them. This produces quarrels and fighting amongst these boys, who reproach one another, saying, You So-and-so, you have stolen my fine image which cost my father two roubles, and left me this wretched one, which is not worth fifty copecs, _i.e._, half a rouble. These scenes would be ludicrous if they were not positively blasphemous, because these images are called on such occasions, as is always done, by the name of gods, _boghi_.
It has been observed by some travellers in Russia that the image-dealers of that country do not sell their wares, but, by a kind of legal fiction, exchange them for a certain sum, and that consequently they are disposed of at a fixed price. This is, however, not the case, and the image-dealers of Russia make no exception to the other merchants of that country, who generally ask for their goods the treble of their value, and a reasonable price can only be obtained by hard bargaining. Only consecrated images, _i.e._, those which have been sprinkled by a priest with holy water, cannot be, I think, made an object of traffic.
The orthodox Russians have no less veneration for fine churches than for splendidly adorned images, and the well-known German dramatic writer Kotzebue gives in the relation of his forced voyage to Siberia,(116) under the Emperor Paul, a characteristic trait of this disposition. The titulary counsellor(117) Shchekatikhin, who conducted him to the place of his exile, Kurghan, in the south of Siberia, showed a great reverence to all the churches which they passed by. Whenever they passed a fine church constructed of solid masonry, he doffed his cap and crossed himself most fervently, whilst he treated very cavalierly all those which were built of wood, making a hardly perceptible sign of the cross in their honour. This national propensity to treat respectfully the great and disdainfully the little, of which M. Shchekatikhin's piety was such a characteristic exemplification, has been, in its application to churches, described by the great admirer of Russia, Baron Haxthausen, whose account of the devotional practices observed by the upper classes of that country I have given above, p. 173, in the following manner:--