After the usual mass, the priests approach the strangely-loaded tables and sing prayers for the dead, swinging the censers all the while. They turn over the leaves of the before-mentioned books, and introduce the names there found in the prayer. When this general prayer and consecration is over, the people disperse about the churchyard ; each party seek the graves of their friends, particularly of those lately lost, and weep over them. The greater number mourn in silence ; but some, whose sorrow is yet new, cast themselves in despair upon the earth, and give it vent aloud. On one such occasion I noticed particularly one old woman, whose voice of lamentation resounded over the whole burying-ground. I went up to her and asked for whom she mourned. She raised herself and answered for a young married daughter. Then she threw herself down again with her face to the grass, and cried into the grave as if her child could hear : " Ah, my dearest daughter, why hast thou forsaken me ? Ah thou loveliest ! thou young one ! why hast thou left thy old mother with her seventy years ? Couldst thou not wait till she had gone before thee ? Ah my daughter, is it not against nature that the child should leave her mother un'tended ? And thy little son, thy Fedor, he too is left. Alas, alas, my daughter, son and mother are left alone !"
I cannot express how deeply the lamentation of this poor old woman affected me, as she chanted her sorrow in a kind of church melody ; now and then ceasing entirely, and burying her gray care-worn head in the grass.
Thus she mourned till the priests came to her grave. They in the meantime paraded the churchyard with burning tapers and crucifixes, and performed a special service over every grave where it was desired, the "books of remembrance" being handed to them for the purpose. The priests were followed by troops of unfortunate persons, cripples and beggars, who expected to receive part of the food in alms. I saw several whose sacks had been so abundantly stored with eggs, that they might have begun trade with them. Some of the mourners gave the whole of what they had brought, and made thus a worthy offering to the departed. My poor old woman was among the number ; I helped her to divide some of the loaves, a task her trembUng hands refused to perform. 1 he ma'ority, 1 am sorry to say, spread their napkins over the graves, arranged their food upon them, not forgetting the wine and brandy-bottles, and set to work with as good an appetite as if the day had been preceded by seven years' of Egyptian famine instead of a Russian Easter. These ghastly banqueting-tables and the revelling groups around them formed the strangest spectacle I ever saw in my life ! The priests, of course, came in for a share, and tasted something at every grave. I approached one company, consisting of some official persons, among whom there was one decorated with a couple of orders. These people had covered a long grave with a large table-cloth, and had loaded it abundantly from a store in their carriage, which was drawn up close by, and out of which they were continually fetching fresh supplies ! Two priests were among the revellers, and were challenged more frequently than any others of the party. Not before night were the dead left in peace in their last resting-place, and many, unfortunately very many, left it in a condition which may be said to have turned the day of remembrance into one of complete forgetfulness. The gi'eat excesses committed at this season are particularly misplaced when the digestive system has been so much lowered in tone, and cause much sickness among the lower class of Russians ; so that, for many, their holidays are attended by very evil consequences. The hospitals are never so full as after Easter ; and, according to the statement of a physician to me, statistical writers, in giving the bills of mortality for the several mouths, might safely quote the Easter holidays as in some measure accounting for the great number of deaths in April.
The sixtieth degree of northern latitude crosses the suburbs of St. Petersburg. Since the creation of the world no other city has displayed so much splendour and luxury, so near the eternal ices of the Pole, as tliis imperial residence ; and the neighbourhood of the Baltic Sea is perhaps the only one where such an attempt in such a parallel could have succeeded.