* * * * * Without the church all was now gayety and bustle. The streets were crowded as if by magic with vehicles of every description. The shops were all open; the sweetmeat and fruit-sellers at their posts, looking as if they had never been absent; the lottery-ticket venders in full cry. The horses and mules had their heads decorated with bows and rosettes and streamers of bright-colored ribbons, and their tails elegantly plaited and tied up to one side of their saddle or harness, with scarlet braid. Even the quiet, patient oxen sported a bit of finery, and wore flowers on the ponderous yoke that weighed down their gentle heads. Crowds of busy men hurried hither and thither; gayly-dressed ladies drove about in their stylish quitrins; loud talking and laughing was the order of the day among the colored population; a riff-raff of little blackies pervaded the city, happily _without_ the squibs, crackers, and fire-arms permitted them until this year, but quite sufficiently boisterous to be intolerable; while the church-bells kept ringing out, adding their clang to the noisy confusion, and _not_ with that merry musical chime we are accustomed to hear in England, the land of the scientific, well-trained bell-ringer. But, indeed, nowhere since I listened years ago to the bells of Saint Mary's in dear old smoky Manchester have I heard a regular triple bob-major! EASTER-SUNDAY. The sun was not yet up when I started for town on Easter morning. The procession of the resurrection--called, to distinguish it from other processions of the resurrection, _del encuentro_, "of the meeting"--was to commence at six o'clock, and I was determined that no tardiness on my part should prevent my seeing the whole of this singular relic of bygone ages. The transition from darkness to light is so wonderfully sudden, however, in these latitudes, that it was broad day when I reached the cathedral, which I found brilliantly illuminated with wax tapers, and hung with crimson damask draperies. Mass had just begun, and there was a considerable number of persons present, most of them ladies, as is always the case in the churches of Havana. How the sight of the men-crowded churches of the United States would astonish these Cubans, who seem to believe that religion is made for ignorant women and children, and that the less they profess to have, the more enlightened they appear! As if the really enlightened man were not he who most deeply feels the necessity of his Maker's care and love--the consolation of addressing him in prayer!