crowded with youths and maidens rushing down with the swiftness of arrows. The sledges are made of ice, dexterously shaped into ships. In the hollow they lay straw to sit upon, and in front a hole is bored for a rope. In the climate of Russia these sledges are lasting enough. I saw one morning in St. Petersburg a striking instance of how much these ice mountains form a national amusement. I was by chance very early in a distaTit quarter of the city, and observed mounted on the roof of a small building a number of people, servants, women and children, whose slippers and floating hair betrayed that they had not long left their beds. They seemed busy about something, and I concluded there must be a chimney on fire, or something of that kind. No such thing ; they had formed a snow mountain from the roof to the ground, and in a few minutes down went the whole company, shouting for joy, on a straw mat, which did duty pro tempore for a sledge.
When all the booths, mountains, and swings In the Admiralty Square are firmly fixed (that is, for the temperature of St. Petersburg, the greater part of the pillars having no other foundation than a hole in the earth filled with snow and water, which holds them as firm as a rock, unless the St. Petersburg February belies its nature), the fun begins on the first Sunday of the " butter-week," and then the gliding and sliding, swinging and singing, whlrhng and twirling, tea-diinking and nut-cracking, that make up the " Masslanitza," go merrily on for the eight stated days.
Tea and nuts are the staple comestibles at a Russian Katsheli. The teasellers stand with their tables at the doors of the theatres and booths, aiTanged in the same way as they are found at the corners of the streets in the towns. In the middle stands a huge machine, from whose chimney a column of steam curls upwards from morning till night. Round about are a multitude of teapots of all sizes, in \vhich you may hare double, single, or half portions of tea. In general only a glass of tea is asked for. Behind his table, stamping and slapping his hands, stands the seller, bawling unceasingly " Gentlemen, will you not please to take a glass of warm tea ?" Off goes his hat to every one who looks at him ; and as he has little doubt that tea is wanted, he often begins to fill the glass at once, inquiring only, " Is it your pleasure with cream ?'' The Russian in general drinks it with a slice of lemon instead. Or, " How will you take the sugar ?" for the real Russian custom is to bite off a piece of sugar before taliing his tea ; only those who affect foreign manners put the lump in at once. Yet more numerous than the tea-sellers are the dealers in nuts. Their tables, standing under tents and inclined towards the street, are divided into compartments filled with all kinds of nuts — Oriikhi (hazel-nuts), Vallotski and Gratsheski oraklii (Italian and Greek nuts), Ukrainski orakhi (Ukraine nuts), and Funduld, the largest kind of hazel nuts, equal in size to a pigeon's G^g-
However many these merchants may be, they seem all busily employed, and seldom lay aside their scales, or the shovels out of which they offer samples of their wares. In a few days the snowy floor of the Adnurulty Square is regularly paved with nut-shells, and looks as if a whole army of JHit -crackers had encamped there.
Nuts, swcatmeats, and honey-cakes arc the only eatables to be had. Eating -houses, wine and brandy shops, arc not allowed on the eleg^ant square of the Admiralty, as they might give rise to indecorous scenes. A honey -cake may be eaten with grace, and so may a bonbon presented by a lover to his mistress : even a nut may be tolerated if nibbled at squirrel fashion, and not demdished by an uncivil crash and a grimace. Cakes and tea may be nipped and sipped in public, but hunger and thirst let every animal satisfy in his own lair.
It struck me as odd enough that the Russian street merchants offer every thing to every body. Either very elegant people must buy very inelegant wares, or the sellers must be so persuaded of their excellence, or so bewitched by the vision of a few possible copeks, that they do not percive how little chance they have of finding customers in such a class.