On the Thursday in Passion Week there is a very interesting ceremony: the washing of the feet of twelve priests in the Isaac’s Cathedral. I had been misinformed as to the time, and so unfortunately missed it. In a Church in whose offices emotion plays so intense—if it did not savour of impiety one would be tempted to say so dramatic—a part, Good Friday must inevitably be celebrated by ceremonies imaging the blackest woe. Nowhere is the tragedy of the Cross represented with so much realism—a realism that might easily have degenerated into something shocking, were it not so hallowed by a veneration born of the Divine Love which said, “This do in remembrance of Me.” It is hardly too much to say that on this day the orthodox Christian lives through the whole awful tragedy now nearly two thousand years old. No other man sees it so vividly before his eyes. In the morning, torn by sorrow, he takes down the Body of the Saviour from the Cross, and with as much reverence as if it were a real corpse, lays it in a lighted funeral chapel to await the burial service of the evening. This I was allowed to witness in the Imperial Chapel of the Winter Palace. The service began with a Mass. The priests, of whom there were four besides the arch-priest, the deacons, readers and choir, were all in deep mourning; the latter in a sort of Court dress, with swords, the clergy in vestments of black velvet and silver. The Mass was, as I was told, performed after the traditions of the worship of the early Christians in the catacombs. In the centre of the church was the bier, covered with a cloth representing an effigy of the dead Saviour, with the Gospel on the breast as at a funeral. Indeed, the whole ceremony is a solemn funeral service. During the Mass every person present was presented with a lighted wax taper, and the bier was surrounded by magnificent candelabra carrying wax lights. As soon as the Mass was over, the choir drew themselves up in triple row behind the priests, who stood on each side of the bier, the arch-priest in the centre, with two deacons supporting him, facing the altar. Then arose the funeral dirge, sung by about fifty fine voices, very soft and still, the basses especially making a fine effect—all the music unaccompanied. At the end of the funeral chant the key changed, and there followed a louder canticle. The priests, one at each corner, and the chief priest in the middle, raised the bier upon their heads and carried it round the church, the whole congregation kneeling and touching the ground with their foreheads while they devoutly crossed themselves. The bier having been replaced and the choir having taken up their former position, the deacon thundered out the _Ektenia_, a litany in which the choir made the responses “Gospodi pomilui” (“Lord, have mercy!”).