Yet the gift of miracles is greater than the gift of sacrifice. The Black Clergy stand out for miracles; not in a mystical sense, but in a natural sense; not only in times long past, but in the present hour; not only in the dark and in obscure hamlets, but in populous places and in the light of day. At Kief a friend drives me out to the caves of Anton and Feodosie, where we find some men and women standing by the gates, expecting the father who keeps the keys to bring them and unlock the doors. As these living pilgrims occupy us more than the dead anchorets, we join this party, pay our five kopecks, light our tapers, and descend with them the rocky stairs into the vault. Candle in hand, an aged monk goes forward, muttering in the gloom; stopping for an instant, here and there, to show us, lying on a ledge of rock, some coffin muffled in a pall. We thread a mile of lanes, saluting saint on saint, and twice or thrice we come into dwarf chapels, in each of which a lamp burns dimly before a shrine. The women kneel; the men cross themselves and pray. Moving forward in the dark, we come upon a niche in the wall, covered by a curtain and a glass door, on the ledge of which stands a silver dish, a little water, and a human skull. Our pilgrims cross themselves and mutter a voiceless prayer, while the aged monk lays down his taper and unlocks the door. A woman sinks on her knees before the niche, turns up her face, and shuts her eyes, while the father, dipping a quill into the water, drops a little of the fluid on her eyelids. One by one, each pilgrim undergoes this rite; and then, on rising from his knees, lays down an offering of a few kopecks on the ledge of rock.

"What does this ceremony mean?" I ask the father. "Mean?" says he: "a mystery—a miracle! This skull is the relic of a holy man whose eye had suffered from a blow. He called upon the Most Pure Mother of God; she heard his cry of pain; and in her pity she cured him of his wound."

"What is the name of that holy man?"—"We do not know."

"When did he live and die?"—"We do not know."

"Was he a monk of Kief?"—"He was; and after he died his skull was kept, because his fame was great, and every one with pain in his eyes came hither to obtain relief."

Not one of our fellow-pilgrims has sore eyes; but who, as the father urges, knows what the morrow may have in store? Bad eyes may come; and who would not like to insure himself forever against pain and blindness at the cost of five kopecks? Such miracles are performed by the bones of saints in cities less holy and old than Kief.

Seraphim, a merchant of Kursk, abandoned his wife, his children, and his shop, to become a monk. Wandering to the cloister called the Desert of Sarof, in the province of Tambof, he dug for himself a hole in the ground, in which he lay down and slept. Some robbers came to his cave, where they beat and searched him; but, on finding his pockets empty, they knew that he must be a holy man. From that lucky day his fame spread rapidly abroad; and people came to see him from far and near; bringing presents of bread, of raiment, and of money; all of which he took into his cave, and doled out afterwards to the poor. A second window had to be cut into his cell; at one he received gifts, at the other he dispensed them. His desert became a populous place, and the Convent of Sarof grew into vast repute.

Seraphim founded a second desert for women, ten miles distant from his own. A gentleman gave him a piece of ground; merchants sent him money; for his favor was by that time reckoned as of higher value than house and land. Lovely and wealthy women drove to see him, and to stay with him; entering into the desert which he formed for them, and living apart from the world, without taking on their heads the burden of conventual vows. At length a miracle was announced. A lamp which hung in front of a picture of the Virgin died out while Seraphim was kneeling on the ground; the chapel grew dark and the face of the Virgin faint; the pilgrims were much alarmed; when, to the surprise of every one who saw it, a light came out from the picture and re-lit the lamp! A second miracle soon followed. One day, a crowd of poor people came to the desert for bread, when Seraphim had little in his cell to give. Counting his loaves, he saw that he had only two; and how was he to divide two loaves among all those hungry folk? He lifted up his voice—and lo! not two, but twenty loaves were standing on his board. From that time wonders were reported every year from Sarof; cures of all kinds; and the court in front of Seraphim's cell was thronged by the lame and blind, the deaf and dumb, by day and night.

Seraphim died in 1833; yet miracles are said to be effected at his tomb to this very hour. Already called a saint, the people ask his canonization from the Church. Every new Emperor makes a saint; as in Turkey every new Sultan builds a mosque; and Seraphim is fixed upon by the public voice as the man whom Alexander the Third will have to make a saint.

One Motovilof, a landowner in the province of Penza, lame, unable to walk, applied for help to Seraphim, who promised the invalid, on conditions, a certain cure. Motovilof was to become a friend of Sarof; a supporter of the female desert. Yielding to these terms, he was told to go down to Voronej, and to make his reverence at the shrine of Metrofanes, a local saint, on which he would find himself free from pain. Motovilof went to Voronej, and came back cured. With grateful heart he gave Seraphim a patch of land for his female desert; and then, being busy with his affairs, he gradually forgot his pilgrimage and his miraculous cure. The pain came back into his leg; he could hardly walk; and not until he sent a supply of bread and clothes to Seraphim was he restored in health. Not once, but many times, the worldly man was warned to keep his pledge; a journey to the desert became a habit of his life; until he fell into love for one of Seraphim's fair penitents, and taking her home from her refuge, made that recluse his wife.

More noticeable still is the story of Tikhon, sometime Bishop of Voronej, now a recognized saint of the Orthodox Church. Tikhon is the official saint of the present reign; the living Emperor's contribution to the heavenly ranks.

Timothy Sokolof, son of a poor reader in a village church, was born (in 1724) in that province of Novgorod which has given to Russia most of her popular saints. The reader's family was large, his income small, and Timothy was sent to work on a neighbor's farm. Toiling in the fields by day, in the sheds by night; sleeping little, eating less; he yet contrived to learn how to read and write. Sent from this farm to a school, just opened in Novgorod, he toiled so patiently at his tasks, and made such progress in his studies, that on finishing his course he was appointed master of the school.

His heart was not in this work of teaching. From his cradle he had been fond of singing hymns and hearing mass, of being left alone with his books and thoughts, of flying from the face of man and the allurements of the world. A vision shaped for him his future course. "When I was yet a teacher in the school," he said to a friend in after life, "I sat up whole nights, reading and thinking. Once, when I was sitting up in May, the air being very soft, the sky very bright, I left my cell, and stood under the starry dome, admiring the lights, and thinking of our eternal life. Heaven opened to my sight—a vision such as human words can never paint! My heart was filled with joy, and from that hour I felt a passionate longing to quit the world."

A few years after he took the cowl and changed the name of Timothy for Tikhon, he was raised from his humble cell to the episcopal bench; first in Novgorod, afterwards at Voronej; the second a missionary see; the province of Voronej lying close to the Don Kozak country and the Tartar steppe.

The people of this district were lawless tribes; Kozaks, Kalmuks, Malo-Russ; a tipsy, idle, vagabond crew; the clergy worse, it may be, than their flocks. Voronej had no schools; the popes could hardly read; the services were badly sung and said. All classes of the people lived in sin. Tikhon began a patient wrestle with these disorders. Opening with the priests, and with the schools, he put an end to flogging in the seminaries; in order, as he said, to raise the standing of a priest, and cause the student to respect himself. This change was but a sign of things to come. By easy steps he won his clergy to live like priests; to drink less, to pray more; and generally to act as ministers of God. In two years he purged the schools and purified the Church.

No less care was given to lay disorders. Often he had to be plain in speech; but such was the reverence felt for him by burgher and peasant that no one dared to disregard his voice. "You must do so, if Tikhon tells you," they would say to each other; "if not, he will complain of you to God." He dressed in a coarse robe; he ate plain food; he sent the wine untouched from his table to the sick. He was the poor man's friend; and only waited on the rich when he found no wretched ones at his gates. The power of Tikhon lay in his faultless life, in his tender tones, and in his loving heart. "Want of love," he used to urge, "is the cause of all our misery; had we more love for our brothers, pain and grief would be more easy to bear; love soothes away all grief and pain."

Two years in Novgorod, five years in Voronej, he spent in these gracious labors, till the longing of his heart for solitude grew too strong. Laying down his mitre, he retired from his palace in Voronej to the convent of Zadonsk, a little town on the river Don, where he gave up his time to writing tracts and visiting the poor. These labors were of highest use; for Tikhon was among the first (if not the first of all) to write in favor of the serf. Fifteen volumes of his works are printed; fifteen more are said to lie in manuscript; and some of these works have gone through fifty editions from the Russian press.

Tikhon's great merit as a writer lies in the fact that he foresaw, prepared, and urged emancipation of the serfs.

For fifteen years he lived the life of a holy man. As a friend of serfs, he one day went to the house of a prince, in the district of Voronej, to point out some wrong which they were suffering on his estate, and to beg him, for the sake of Jesus and Mary, to be tender with the poor. The prince got angry with his guest for putting the thing so plainly into words; and in the midst of some sharp speech between them, struck him in the face. Tikhon rose up and left the house; but when he had walked some time, he began to see that he—no less than his host—was in the wrong. This man, he said to himself, has done a deed of which, on cooling down, he will feel ashamed. Who has caused him to do that wrong? "It was my doing," sighed the reprover, turning on his heel, and going straight back into the house. Falling at the prince's feet, Tikhon craved his pardon for having stirred him into wrath, and caused him to commit a sin. The man was so astonished, that he knelt down by the monk, and, kissing his hands, implored his forgiveness and his benediction. From that hour, it is said, the prince was another man; noticeable through all the province of Voronej for his kindness to the serfs.

Tikhon lived into his eightieth year. Before he passed away, he told the brethren of his convent he would live until such a day and then depart. He died, as he had told them he should die—on the day foreseen, and in the midst of his weeping friends. From the day of his funeral, his shrine in Zadonsk was visited by an ever-increasing crush; for cures of many kinds were wrought; the sick recovered, the lame walked home, the blind saw, the crooked became straight. A thousand voices claimed the canonization of this friend of serfs; until the reigning emperor, struck by this appeal, invited the Holy Governing Synod to conduct the inquiries which precede the canonization of a Russian saint.

The commission sat; the miracles were proved; and then the tomb was opened. Out from the coffin came a scent of flowers; the flesh was pure and sweet; and the act of canonization was decreed and signed in 1861, the emancipation year. Tikhon of Zadonsk is the emancipation saint.

Yet, according to the Black Clergy, the newest and the greatest miracle of modern times is the Virgin's defense of Solovetsk against the Anglo-French squadron in 1854.

The wardrobe of Solovetsk contains the chief treasures of the cloister; old charters and letters; original grants of lands; the rescript of Peter; manuscript lives of Savatie and Zosima; service-books, richly bound in golden plates; Pojarski's sword; cups, lamps, crosses, candlesticks in gold and silver; but the treasure of treasures is the evidence of that stupendous miracle wrought by the Most Pure Mother of God.

On the centre stand, under a glass case, strongly locked, lie an English shell and two round-shot. They are carefully inscribed. A reliquary in a closet holds a dozen bits of brass, the rent fusees of exploded shells. A number of prints are sold to the devout, in which the English gun-boats are moored under the convent wall, so near that men might easily have leaped on shore. Among this mass of evidence is a new and splendid ornamental cup; the gift of Russia to Solovetsk—in memory of the day when human help had failed, and "the convent that endureth forever" was saved by the Virgin Mother of God.

A scoffer here and there may smile. "Savatie! Zosima!" laughed a Russian cynic in my face; "you English made the fortune of these saints. How so? You see a peasant has but two notions in his pate—the Empire and the Church; a power of the flesh and a power of the spirit. Now, see what you have done. You wage war upon us; you send your fleets into the Black Sea and into the White Sea; in the first to fight against the Empire, in the second to fight against the Church. In one sea, you win; in the other sea, you lose. Sevastopol falls to your arms; while Solovetsk drives away your ships. The arm of the spirit is seen to be stronger than the arm of flesh. What then? 'Heaven,' says the rustic to his neighbor, as they dawdle home from church, 'is mightier than the Tsar.' For fifty years to come our superstitions will lie on English heads!"

The tale of that miracle, told me on the spot, will sound in some ears like a piece of high comedy, in others like a chapter from some ancient and forgotten book. A dry dispatch from Admiral Ommanney contains the little that we know of our "Operations in the White Sea;" the next Chapter gives the story, as they tell it on the other side.