A venerable canon now ascends a platform, and from a very high desk reads some chapters, recites prayers, and then lights the great Easter candle which stands beside him. This is a huge pillar of wax, decorated with beautifully painted wreaths of flowers, and is placed in a magnificent silver candlestick. He takes the five cones of incense which the cardinal had blessed in the porch, and fixes them on the candle in the form of a cross. During his reading, the candles and lamps all over the church are relighted, and when it is over, all who formed the procession, bearing bouquets of lovely flowers, and small brushes like those used on Holy-Thursday, march to the baptistery, where the cardinal blesses the font, pours on the water in the huge basin chrism and oil, and sprinkles water to the four points of the compass—typifying the quarters of the globe. On the return of the procession to the choir chapel, the cardinal and others prostrate themselves before the altar while some beautiful litanies are chanted. Then follows a pause, during which the priests retire to the sacristy to take off their embroidered vestments. They return wearing only surplices edged with handsome lace over their cassocks. The cardinal has a plain cope of white silk and gold. After this, is the mass; and at the _Gloria_ the bells ring out a grand peal, all pictures are uncovered, and the organ is played for the first time during many days. The great church resumes its wonted cheerful aspect, and light and colour hold again their places. The afternoon ceremonies consist only of a procession of the cardinal to worship at special altars, the display of the holy relics, and the singing of a fine _Alleluia_ and psalm, instead of the usual vespers. Some pause is needed, one feels, before the cathedral is filled by the crowds who attend the Easter-Sunday mass; for no greater contrast can be imagined than that between the scenes of the quiet morning functions, with the numerous priests and few people, the stillness and peace of the hours we have been describing, and those enacted by the thronging crowds of foreign sightseers at the great festivals, who, pushing, gesticulating, standing on tiptoe, and asking irrelevant questions in audible voices, seem to look on these sacred services as spectacles devised for their gratification, rather than as expressions of the worship of a large section of their fellow-creatures; thus exemplifying the rapidity with which ignorance becomes irreverence. AMONG THE ADVERTISERS AGAIN.