is very remarkable. The lights, the singing, the bells, all the pomp of divine service, are consigned to repose. Many of the devout have had nothing to eat for the last three days. The churches are as dark as the grave, and no priest shows himself till midnight. A desk, on which lies an open Bible, is placed in the middle of the church; one of the lower classes will advance, light his taper, and read till some one else advances to release him.

Towards midnight the throng increases. In St. Petersburg the court appears in the imperial chapel in full dress. The priests begin a mass, which is but languidly performed or listened to, till all at once, at the midnight hour, the whole scene changes. The golden door of the pictorial wall that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the church flies open, and the song bursts forth "Christ is risen! Christ is risen from the dead!" At the same moment the illumination of the church is completed-not only the lamps and great chandelier, but the tapers also in the hands of each of the congregation. Whilst the chief body of priests, still singing, remove the pall with the corse, two others in their richest dress pass through the church with censers in their hands repeating the joyful words, and stopping before the shrine of every saint to swing the censer and make their genuflexions, and blessing the different groups of devotees. The congregation shake hands, and kiss all with whom they

have the most distant acquaintance.

The churches

are illuminated without as well as within, and all the bells in the city ring out at once.

The last ceremony is the blessing of the food, which takes place about 3 o'clock in the morning. All the dishes are ranged in long rows through the whole church, leaving space enough for the priests to pass between them. As the priest advances, sprinkling to the right and left, and pronouncing the blessing, while his attendant keeps up a constant chant, the people press closer and closer, crossing themselves and keeping a sharp watch that their flowers and food get their due share of the purifying waters.

The Easter kiss is the most interesting of all the festivities. "In the first place," says Köhl, “all members of a family, without exception, kiss each other; if the family consist only of ten individuals, there are at once ninety kisses. Then all acquaintance meeting for the first time at Easter, even where the acquaintance is but slight, would think it a breach of politeness not to kiss and embrace each other with the greatest cordiality. The devil take you, Maxim.!' I once heard an old woman exclaim to a young man, 'can't you say Christos vosskross, and give me a kiss?'"

Köhl proceeds to calculate the number of Easter embraces at St. Petersburg, with its half million of inhabitants, at fifty millions. Every general of a corps of 60,000 men must embrace all the officers, every

colonel those of his regiment, and a select number of the men besides. In the civil department the chief embraces all his subordinates, who wait upon him in their gala dresses.

At Rome the ceremonies are very elaborate, the Pope officiating on Easter Day at St. Peter's. He is borne into the church seated in his Sedia Gestatoria, his vestments blaze with gold; on his head is the tiara, a tall round gilded cap representing the triple crown, signifying spiritual power, temporal power, and a union of both. Over him is borne a silk canopy richly fringed. In the evening the dome and other exterior parts of St. Peter's are brilliantly illuminated with lamps.

According to the Prayer Book rule, " Easter Day is always the first Sunday after the full moon which happens upon or next after the 21st day of March; and if the full moon happens upon a Sunday, Easter Day is the Sunday after." But as this rule goes upon the presumption (which is not always correct) that the vernal equinox is on the 21st of March, and that the moon is full on the 14th day, it frequently happens that the day appointed according to the ecclesiastical rule is different from that which would be observed were it regulated by the real moon in the heavens, instead of by an imaginary moon, the movements of which are calculated by a very ancient method. Hence, when this discrepancy occurs, letters in the news

papers appear, the writers of which presume the almanac makers are at fault.

The reader will find this subject discussed very fully and clearly in " Lardner's Museum of Science and Art."

BLACK MONDAY.

Stow, the chronicler, thus describes the origin of this name :—“ Black Monday" is Easter Monday, and was so called on this occasion: in the 34th year of Edward III. (1360), the 14th of April, and the morrow after Easter Day, King Edward, with his host, lay before the city of Paris: which day was full dark of mist and hail, and so bitter cold that many men died on their horses' backs with the cold. Wherefore unto this day it hath been called Black Monday."

LOW SUNDAY.

The Sunday after Easter Day is called Low Sunday, because it is Easter Day repeated, with the church service somewhat abridged or lowered in the ceremony, from the pomp of the festival the Sunday before. Other writers have supposed that it was called Low Sunday because it is the lowest or latest day for satisfying of the Easter obligation, viz., the worthily receiving the blessed Sacrament.

M

ALL FOOL'S DAY.

The custom of making fools on the 1st of April, according to the Public Advertiser, April 13th, 1789, "is said to have begun from the mistake of Noah in sending the dove out of the Ark before the water had abated, on the first day of the month, among the Hebrews, which answers to our first of April: and, to perpetuate the memory of this deliverance, it was thought proper, whoever forgot so remarkable a circumstance, to punish them by sending them upon some sleeveless errand similar to that ineffectual message upon which the bird was sent by the patriarch.

The origin of the custom seems to be lost in obscurity, a certain proof of its great antiquity; it prevails not only in England, but also in Sweden; and Colonel Pearce, in his "Asiatic Researches," proves it to have been an immemorial custom among the Hindoos, at a festival held about the same period, called the Huli Festival. This, however, according to Maurice, was a celebration of the vernal equinox, equally observed in India and Britain.

The Spectator alludes to the custom as prevailing everywhere, when everybody strives to make as many fools as he can. In the North of England the persons imposed upon are called "April Gowks," the word gowk meaning a cuckoo, which is everywhere a name of contempt.