Page:Letter from T.H. Barker to his wife Mary, 3 December 1903.pdf/3

 otherwise I should have been able to leave to-night. Public places are practically all closed; also shops and banks.

The morning was given up to religion services. The Trinity was a blaze of splendour, with its magnificent gilded, and painted screens and chanaliers. The Cathedral is square in shape, with a great central dome and four cupolas. Outside the Church is snow-white, with grey blue domes and cupolas. Around the square are fine buildings red and white, with roofs of a beautiful green. The ground is, of course, covered with snow. Inside the Church is magnificent with carving, gilding, paint and pictures, no plain wall; the style the richest Byzantine. It was crowded with people of all classes; all standing. The Chair was noble, I have never heard such chanting before. The priests were in cloth of gold and silver, and the Chief Priest wore a black hat of this shape He was a beautiful man, with long golden hair moustache and long fair imperial. His brown were straigh, his nose straight and in his magnificent dress he looked noble. He was supported by others in beautiful robes, but without caps, and they chanted in a trio most melodiously. I should have said that the Chief Priest wore under his robe of cloth of silver and gold, a tunic of warm peach coloured silk or satin, embroided deeply with gold at the hem, and over which came his stole of gold and silver, with a chased silver crucifix, and in his hand a large crucifix of the same metals. At the end of the service he stood on the steps of the Holy of Holies, which was all glorious within, with gold, silver, silken draperies and lights. In front of him, a yard or two away, stood a desk covered with silk or velvet, on which lay a gold backed Bible, with a Holy Family in paint or