In St. Petersburg there are very often processions of these pictures when the cholera is about, or any great event takes place: I saw them many times. The priests in their magnificent robes, bearing golden crosses and sacred banners, and several deacons carrying some miraculous portrait or other, go round the town accompanied by a band of choristers singing mass, and followed by immense crowds of the poorer classes, who consider themselves to be thereby performing an act of great devotion, every man having his head uncovered during the whole time. The picture is generally taken to some church, wherein mass is performed in its presence. When I was staying in Jaroslaf one spring, I had an opportunity of seeing the extent to which the superstition of the people and their reverence for these pictures prevailed. As soon as the Volga was cleared of ice, hundreds of pilgrims and peasants from all parts of the country poured into the town, and they might have been seen in groups lying asleep on the bare ground, both men and women, there not being lodgings sufficient for their accommodation, but they probably preferred the open air, as they frequently sleep by the roadside on their marches. The custom of going on a pilgrimage is very general in Russia. We had a servant who went from St. Petersburg to Jerusalem and back again on foot. She went to the holy sepulchre to return thanks for her son’s recovery from sickness, and was absent a year. There is really something very affecting in such an act of gratitude and devotion. The object of the pilgrimage to Jaroslaf was to assist in the procession of a wonderful miraculous picture of the Virgin, which was shortly expected to arrive from a monastery distant about eighty versts down the river.