Another stupid regulation also exists. If one man should happen to see another lying murdered on the ground, and should be so unwary as to give information of the fact to the authorities, he is in danger of being himself detained until some trace of the real assassin be discovered. An English person informed me that he was one day crossing the river on foot at an early hour in the morning, and, to his horror, he saw the body of a murdered man lying close to a hole in the ice. Apparently, those who had committed the dreadful crime had been alarmed just as they were on the point of sinking their victim in the Neva, and had fled and left him. As for the Englishman, he did not dare to give information of it, as he knew too well the penalty. Who can tell how many wicked deeds are done in this gaudy capital between the setting and the rising of the sun on a long winter’s night, or how many of the murdered have floated beneath the ponderous ice, silently pursuing their frightful voyage towards the gulf! Alas! many, very many, I have been repeatedly assured by those who had every means of knowing the truth. Yonder is a poor man’s funeral—how sad! There is not a single mourner to follow him to his final place of rest; perhaps he was a common soldier or a convict, for here one is almost as much respected as the other. The coffin is nothing but a long, roughly-made deal box stuffed with straw (a few pieces of which escape from under the lid), and is dragged along on a peasant’s sledge with as much unconcern as if it contained the body of a dog. How different from the magnificent funeral cortège I saw only yesterday! it was that of the Prince L. The road was strewn with branches of fir; numbers of men preceded the procession with flaming torches in their hands: the bishop in his mitre, the priests in their silver-bordered robes; the choristers chanting the funeral service in solemn tones; the splendid coffin with its rich and beautiful mountings; the glittering pall of cloth of gold; the magnificent canopy of crimson velvet with white ostrich-feathers waving in the wind, as if they mocked the lifeless corse beneath them; the footmen in their white-bordered coats, cocked hats, and long streamers of red, blue, and white ribbons. The innumerable carriages and sledges, marshalled in a long line by the gensdarmes, closed the procession; the soldiers presented arms to the dead. Yet all his riches and nobility could not free the proud Prince L. from Nature’s heavy debt, nor prevent him from treading the same dreary path as yon poor friendless wretch.