The Greek Church

Though such wild furious looking fellows, they are said to be very harmless, and as I can say from experience are most strangely polite to every one.  In their small log villages you may see a crowd standing lazily about, and another of their acquaintance coming up on his dirty sheep skin is received by them all, with uncovered heads in fact as polite as a Frenchman.  In these poor starving towns, with no building there better than a dirty log hut, you universally on this route find one or more really noble looking churches and mosques.  In this part of Russia, as in Moscow they have copied the houses of worship from the Turks, and their church is generally formed like a mosque, with its half-a dozen colored & spangled [22] domes and minarets.  In the Greek Church, in most respects just like the Catholic, there is apparently much more superstition than in the Roman—certainly true in the lower classes of Society, or I should say life [?].  The people seem  completely devoted to the forms at least of religion. It is one canon of the Greek church to admit no images into their churches, yet walk into them and you will find them filled with pictures, of Saints, Madonnas, Christs, & yet almost universally with the bodies of the figures covered with silver or gold leaving the head, hands & feet only visible, and before one of these virgins, you will see some sheep-skin-clad serf placing his penny candle and prostrating his body ‘till his forehead touches the pavement, rising and crossing himself for an half hour at a time without cessation, and all the while muttering over some form of prayer to the Holy Mother, or other saint whose likeness [23] is before him.  As far as I can judge they are as much worshippers of idols as the Heathen of old.  You cannot in St Pg or in fact in any part of the Empire pass a church without seeing before it every minute of the day some one stopping taking off his hat and crossing himself frequently and apparently & I believe sincerely devoutfully and then going on his way.