Among the upper classes in St. Petersburg balls, routs, and all carnival revelries begin to crowd thick and fast upon each other as early as the commencement of February. But the mass of the people compress these preparatory exercises into the week before the beginning of the fast. This is the famous _Masslänitza_ or “Butter Week,” which contains the sum and substance of all Russian festivity. All the butter that should naturally have gone into the consumption of the succeeding seven weeks is concentrated into this. Whatever can be eaten with butter is buttered; what can not, is eschewed. The standard dish of the week is _blinni_, a kind of pancake, made with butter; fried in butter, and eaten with butter-sauce. For this one week the great national dish of _shtshee_ or cabbage-soup is banished from the land. Breakfast dispatched, then come the amusements. Formerly the swings, ice-mountains, and temporary theatres were erected upon the frozen plain of the Neva. But some years since, the ice gave way under the immense pressure, and a large number of the revelers were drowned. Since that time the great square of the Admiralty has been devoted to this purpose. For days previous, long trains of sledges are seen thronging to the spot, bearing timbers, poles, planks, huge blocks of ice, and all the materials necessary for the erection of booths, theatres, swings, and slides. These temporary structures are easily and speedily reared. A hole is dug in the frozen ground, into which the end of a post is placed. It is then filled with water, which under the influence of a Russian February binds it in its place as firmly as though it were leaded into a solid rock. The carnival commences on the first Sunday of the Butter Week, and all St. Petersburg gives itself up to sliding and swinging, or to watching the sliding and swinging of others. By a wise regulation eating and drinking shops are not allowed in the square, and the staple potable and comestibles are tea, cakes, and nuts. Few more animated and stirring sights are to be seen than the Admiralty square at noon, when the mirth is at the highest among the lower orders, and when all the higher classes make their appearance driving in regular line along a broad space, in front of the booths, reserved for the equipages. Every body in St. Petersburg of any pretensions to rank or wealth keeps a carriage of some kind; and every carriage, crowded with the family in their gayest attire, joins in the procession.