and, making few proselytes, are recruited from their original homes.
It is a natural and distinctive product of the old Muscovite race, which, although obstinate, full of prejudices, and not inclined to change, is realistic and superstitious, better satisfied with the form and outward symbol than curious to investigate the essence, or foundation, of its belief, and, above all, is intensely national.
Outward surroundings have had great influence, and the predominance of Old Believers in the most distant and less populous districts is not accidental, but is a natural result of the condition of the people who are thus isolated; they have little intercourse with one another, and still less with the outer world; they remain more primitive in their habits, and cling more persistently and more reverently to ancient customs.
The distribution of the two great branches of the Raskol is in harmony with historic precedent. The lay element of religious communities is ever apt to assert itself more boldly in the cold and rude regions of the North than in milder and more genial climes, and accordingly the Popovtsi, who retain a priesthood, are found chiefly towards the South, among the Cossacks of the Don, along the banks of the lower Volga, and of the river Ural; while the Bezpopovtsi, who reject priests and all Church government, occupy the shores of the White Sea, the neighborhood of the great lakes, the slopes of the Ural Mountains, and the solitudes of Siberia; the convent of Vygoretsk, in the wild and desolate region through which flows the river Vyg, was their most important centre. These northern governments are of prodigious extent: Archangel equals France and Italy together; Vologda and Perm are each as large as England. But few churches, and these distant many days' journey one
