The most solemn service of the year takes place at midnight on Saturday. From eight until ten o’clock the town, which during the day had been crowded with people buying provisions and presents and Easter eggs, seems to be asleep and dead. At about ten people begin to stream towards the Kremlin. At eleven o’clock there is already a dense crowd, many of the people holding lighted tapers, waiting outside in the square, between the Cathedral of the Assumption and that of Ivan Veliki. A little before twelve the cathedrals and palaces on the Kremlin are all lighted up with ribbons of various coloured lights. Twelve o’clock strikes, and then the bell of Ivan Veliki begins to boom: a beautiful full-voiced, immense volume of sound—a sound which Clara Schumann said was the most beautiful she had ever heard. Then it is answered by other bells, and a little later all the bells of all the churches in Moscow are ringing together. Then from the cathedral comes the procession; the singers first in crimson and gold; the bearers of the gilt banners; then the Metropolitan, also in stiff robes of crimson and gold, and after him the officials in their uniforms. They walk round the cathedral to look for the Body of Our Lord, and return to the cathedral to tell the news that He is risen. Then the guns go off, rockets are fired, and illuminations are seen across the river, lighting up the distant cupola of the great Church of the Saviour with a cloud of fire. The crowd begins to disperse and to pour into the various churches. I went to the Manège—an enormous riding school, in which the Ekaterinoslav Regiment has its church. Half the building looked like a fair. Long tables, twinkling with hundreds of wax tapers, were loaded with the three articles of food which are eaten at Easter; a huge cake called koulich; a kind of sweet cream made of curds and eggs, cream, and sugar, called Pascha (Easter); and Easter eggs, dipped and dyed in many colours. They are there waiting to be blessed. The church itself was a tiny little recess on one side of the building. There the priests were officiating and down below in the centre of the building the whole regiment was drawn up. There are two services—the service which begins at midnight, and which lasts about half an hour, and Mass, which follows immediately after it, lasting till about three in the morning. At the end of the first service, when “Christ is risen” is sung, the priest kisses the congregation three times and then the congregation kiss each other, one person saying “Christ is risen” and the other answering “He is risen, indeed.” The colonel kisses the sergeant; the sergeant kisses all the men one after another. While this ceremony was proceeding I left and went to the Church of the Saviour, where the first service was not yet over. Here the crowd was so dense that it was almost impossible to get into the church, although it is immense. The singing in this church