children, celebrate the holy liturgy, and bring the last comfort to the dying; who (when they can resist its temptations themselves) do at any rate something towards putting down the drunkenness that is the curse of the Russian peasant; and who, since they are married and so can never hope to become bishops, know nothing of higher Church politics, but lead simple godly lives in the care of souls. When Mr. Palmer was in Russia he lodged for a time with a parish priest named Fortunatov. M. Fortunatov was a charming example of his kind. His house swarmed with vermin, and the windows could not be opened all the winter.[1] But he was a person of some culture, speaking Latin and a little German.[2] He had studied the Bible as well as many other things at the Spiritual Academy, and he always helped himself to food before his wife on the strength of Gen. i.[3] When his little daughter, looking at a picture-book, pointed to each woodcut and delightedly called them "little god!" he could not understand Mr. Palmer's pious horror. Such "sheer and gross ignorance" he found natural in peasants and women.[4] He could discourse on philosophy, and had a perfect genius for aphorisms: "Aristotle goes only on experience (!), Plato is imaginative, Socrates religious."[5] He was no truckler to modern science: "All the modern geologists overturn religion, especially by interpreting the six days of Creation to be six periods."[6] And he had a most engaging way of putting an end to religious controversy. When Mr. Palmer showed him a controversial letter he had written to the President of Magdalen "Mr. F. criticized it freely and ended by going to his piano and singing the Trisagion, the Cherubicon, the Ter Sanctus, the hymn, Nunc dimittis and Te Deum."[7] When one learns that so much talent and tact were developed on an income of about £9 a year,[8] one realizes that the Russian clergy cannot be accused of teaching things which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake.
