Frequency of confession and communion, and the punctual observance of a vast number of fast-days, during the year, are prescribed with severity. They have become the most essential points of faith, and the people believe with confidence that an exact adherence to them is sufficient to expiate the heaviest crimes, particularly after the confessor’s absolution, which, in most cases, is to be obtained by the means of a good fee. Attending divine service at a very early hour on Sundays and other holidays, and three or four times a day during the week of the Passion, is also required and observed; the signs of devotion performed in it, consist in making crosses and prostrations before the images, kissing them, and lighting a candle to some favourite saint. The Gospel, when read, is heard with indifference and inattention. Preaching is not customary. The laws of the church strictly forbid matrimony between persons who are in any degree related to each other: they even go so far as to prevent marriage between people whose parents may have stood godfathers to either in baptism. The severity of the matrimonial laws is still greater with respect to the difference of religion, when one of the parties belongs to the Greek church. A transgression would be followed by a sentence of divorce, and punished by excommunication, if the marriage, already concluded, were persisted in. The dread of this last evil is so great to all the natives, that every sacrifice is made in preference of being exposed to it. The patriarch of Constantinople, although acknowledged as chief of the religion, has no controul over the church of the two principalities and exercises but little influence over its chief dignitaries. CHAPTER VIII. PEASANTS—THEIR MANNERS AND MODE OF LIVING.—EMIGRATIONS.—AGRICULTURE.—GENERAL ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY.—AN ACCOUNT OF THE GYPSIES. There does not perhaps exist a people labouring under a greater degree of oppression from the effect of despotic power, and more heavily burthened with impositions and taxes, than the peasantry of Wallachia and Moldavia; nor any who would bear half their weight with the same patience and seeming resignation. Accustomed, however, to that state of servitude which to others might appear intolerable, they are unable to form hopes for a better condition; the habitual depression of their minds has become a sort of natural stupor and apathy, which render them equally indifferent to the enjoyments of life, and insensible to happiness, as to the pangs of anguish and affliction.