The room in which the Emperor died is sealed and walled up, and the palace is now converted into a school of engineers. The Imperial Library is one of the most extensive in Europe, containing 400,000 volumes and 15,000 manuscripts. St. Petersburg has only about thirty churches, the four principal the Kazan, St. Isaac, the Smolnoi and St. Peter and St. Paul. The first of these, Kazan, is a copy, though on a small scale, of St. Peter's at Rome, with its colonnade, and adorned with colossal statues. In the interior are fifty-six marble columns, each 52 feet in height, hewn out of a single block of marble. The walls and flooring of the same are all beautifully polished. That part which answers to our chancel, in all Greek churches is looked upon as the Holy of Holies, shut off from the rest of the building by a screen, called the Iconostat. This is set apart for the priests: laymen may enter, but no woman, not even the Empress, can go into this mysterious enclosure. In this church, all its beams and posts are of massive silver, the three doors and arches being 20 feet in height above the altar. We could not learn, says Murray, how many hundredweight of silver were employed, but doubtless many thousands of dozens of French and German spoons, and hundreds of soup tureens and tea pots must have been melted down by the Cossacks in 1813 and 1814 as offerings to the Holy Mother of Kazan, this Madonna being held by them in peculiar veneration. The members of the Greek religion pray standing,--the interior of the church is always devoid of pew, bench, or chair; but in every church there is a place set apart for the Emperor to stand in, which is raised above the floor, and usually covered with a canopy. An exception has been made in favour of the Dowager Empress on account of ill-health. This standing during a service, continuing two hours, must prove very fatiguing, but is a sure preventive of sleeping. Behind and in front the ceremonies are performed by numerous priests, fine looking men, with long flowing beards, in robes of most costly materials; the genuflexions are numerous and very low, incense is much used, and there are some good pictures, but no statuary and no organ or other instrumental music; but the chanting is peculiar and very striking. Whilst in catholic countries the churchgoers are mostly women; in Russia we find both sexes engaged in such duties.