[3] The Greek Church forbids any carved images, although it allows painted ones: they say “graven images” are expressly forbidden; how they get over the ensuing “nor the likeness,” &c., they could never satisfactorily explain.
[4] The Russians begin preparing a dowry for their daughters almost as soon as they are born, and they accumulate an immense quantity of things by the time they are marriageable.
[5] The unmarried girls have their hair done in one long thick plait hanging straight down the back; the married have two, which are twisted under the head-dress.
[6] The priests are so called in Russia.
[7] The heat is so great for some weeks in the summer that I have heard people who have just arrived from India declare it is more insupportable than anything which they had experienced in that country.
[8] So absurdly anxious is the government to prevent even the faintest echo of the voice of freedom from being heard in Russia, that it is a positive fact that the librettos of the operas of Masaniello and William Tell were ordered to be changed lest the subject should be too exciting!
[9] In Russia there are many superstitions regarding this animal; the people never eat it, as they consider it unclean. Perhaps this might have arisen from their ancient Pagan creed, as one of their idols had the body of a woman and the head of a hare.
[10] The Russians make a kind of tea out of these blossoms, which they take as a cure for a cold; also of dried raspberries, which is used for the same purpose—a decoction of either producing a violent perspiration.
[11] The coffin for an old person is generally covered with black and trimmed with silver, but for a young person it is pink or white, with a quantity of gold ornaments; wreaths of flowers, according to the age of the dead, are laid on the top.
[12] The Russians have a strange idea that the Jews steal children to eat them, especially at the time of Pentecost, and no reasoning will persuade them of the absurdity and falsehood of this idea.