gravity and unction, or mumbles it over in haste with contemptuous carelessness; and it requires both the strong convictions and the strong neck of a Russian peasant to submit to such religious exercises. But what miracles will not piety perform! One of my companions in our lodging-house, a peasant of Viatka, had complained of violent pains in his head, but after having gone through this operation with the Evangel, and having had his neck swelled by it, till the veins of both neck and face seemed ready to burst, he assured me, as we left the chapel, that it was as if some one had lifted off with their hands the horrible pains from which he had suffered: ‘Praise be to God’ (_Slava Bokow_). The occupations of a fervent _bohomolets_ did not, however, prevent my wandering about the town. Archangel has a population of not much more than twenty thousand; but its port and commercial business give it an air of great animation. The town proper is joined by a wooden bridge over the Dvina with the island of Solonbal--a sort of suburb, in which has arisen the palace of the Governor. Many churches and some good houses in brick decorate this city, which is mainly constructed of wood. One single wide street, which extends through the whole length of Archangel, is paved: all its other streets and lanes are excessively dirty and muddy, for the _toundra_, or marshy clay upon which, like St. Petersburg, this city has been built, crops up in all directions. In one of the squares rises a colossal statue of Lomonossov. To this rhetorician and celebrated grammarian is traced the origin of a national literature in Russia, under the reign of the Tzarina Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great.