The same may be said of their driving out to meet the summer, which seems to find its counterpart in China; and the presentation of the egg at Easter might have been derived from the Hindoo religion, as we are told that the Brahmins affirm that the Creator was floating on the surface of the waters under the form of an egg. It is certain that some superstitions regarding this object must have a more ancient origin than the Christian era, so many traces of it having been found in Egyptian tombs; nor can it have been since that time confined to the Christian Church alone; for when we were at Twer a new road was being cut close to our house, and the men in digging came to a Tartar burying-ground; hundreds of coffins were removed, and in many _eggs_ were found; some of them were brought to us. The bodies were all enclosed in strips of the birch-bark, but a few had the remains of the Tartar costume. In speaking on this subject I may mention that in one coffin a large bottle of some strong liquor was discovered, which the workmen had no sooner opened than they drank the whole of its contents, which they pronounced as some of the best they had ever tasted! It had probably been some centuries under ground. We were once at a grand festival given in honour of the memory of a rich proprietor on the anniversary of his death: it lasted three days, and was in fact a “wake,” as the Irish call it. It differed in no way from an ordinary rejoicing, excepting that we went in the morning to church, in which all the peasants belonging to the estate were assembled. In the afternoon the villagers danced in front of the edifice, just as they would have done at a wedding, whilst the friends of the gentleman at whose house it was given dined together. There were all kinds of delicacies and every description of wine—champagne, œil de perdrix, burgundy, claret, &c.