As we were walking on the most thronged of the thoroughfares in St. Petersburg, the Nevski Perspective, a well-dressed gentleman paused, and, turning toward a church which he was passing, took off his hat and offered a silent prayer. What at first appeared the eccentricity of a single individual, or excessive devotion, I soon perceived was the practice of many, and indeed a custom of the country. In passing a church, of course one passes an altar; and it may be, and indeed is, out of sight, but the devout believer recognizes the fact by a token of reverence, slight perhaps, but nevertheless sincere. Women hurrying by with baskets of market stuff were often willing to put down their burdens before the cross and pass a moment in thoughts of their Saviour. I went into the church, the Kazan Cathedral, with a colonnade in feeble imitation of St. Peter’s at Rome. The Greek religion is as nearly like the Romish as this church is like St. Peter’s: it is a copy _after it_, and a good ways after it, but still so near that it amounts to the same thing. They do not make unto themselves graven images, because that is forbidden by the second commandment; but they do make the likeness of things in heaven and earth, although that is forbidden, and they do bow down and worship these likenesses, or pay apparently the same honors to a picture of the Virgin that the Romanist does to a statue. The distinction is without a difference. But when I entered the cathedral, I saw a sight that never met my eye in Rome or any Roman Catholic city. In the middle of the day, and on a week-day too, respectably appearing, well-dressed gentlemen were standing or kneeling before the altar offering their devotions. Women were there numerously, and the poor, whose garb denoted their poverty; and these classes are largely represented in Romish churches everywhere; but the Greek religion had such hold upon the people of another set, as to excite remark. The same lavish expenditure upon the churches is to be seen here as in Italy and Spain, though the architecture is far from being so effective as that which prevails in Spain and Italy. This church was built sixty years ago, at an expense of three millions of dollars then. A colonnade inside in four rows extends from the centre pillars supporting the dome, which is 230 feet above the floor, and from the three great doors. These columns are fifty-six in number, each one a single stone, thirty-five feet high, with bronze Corinthian capitals. In the midst of the main door the name of God is recorded with precious stones, and a miraculous painting of the Virgin blazes with gold and jewels of untold value. And in the midst of this temple of religion, sacred to the worship of the Prince of Peace, hung trophies of victories over France, Turkey, and Persia.