doubt not, many worthy and well-informed
people learned for the first time that Russia produced poets as well as
potashes. Russia has lately lost a poet of true genius, of whom his
countrymen are proud, and no doubt have a right to be proud, for his
poetry found its way at once to the heart of the nation: but how few there
are amongst us who know any thing of Poushkin, unless it be his untimely
and melancholy end?

The generation that has been so prolific of prose fiction in other parts
of Europe, has not been barren in Russia. She boasts of men to whom she is
grateful for having adorned her young literature with the creations of
their genius, or who have made her history attractive with the allurements
of faithful fiction, giving life, and flesh, and blood to its dry bones;
and yet, gentle reader, learned or fair--or both fair and learned--whether
sombre in small clothes, or brilliant in _bas-bleus_--how many could
you have named a year ago of those names which are the pride and delight
of a great European nation, with which we have had an intimate, friendly,
and beneficial intercourse for three consecutive centuries, and whose
capital has now for some years been easily accessible in ten days from our
own?

Surely it is somewhat strange, that while Russia fills so large a space,
not only on the map, but in the politics of the world--while the influence
of her active mind, and of her powerful muscle, is felt and acknowledged
in Europe, Asia, and America--that we, who come in contact with her
diplomatic skill and her intelligence at every turn and in every quarter,
should never have thought it worth while to take any note of her
literature--of the more attractive movements of her mind.

The history, the ancient mythology, and the early Christian legends of
Russia, are full of interest. We there encounter the same energetic and
warlike people, who, from roving pirates of the Baltic sea, became the
founders of dynasties, and who have furnished much of what is most
romantic in the history of Europe. The Danes, who ravaged our coasts, and
gave a race of princes to England; the Normans, from whom are descended
our line of sovereigns, and many of our noble and ancient families--the
Normans, who established themselves in Sicily and the Warrhag, or
Varangians, who made their leader, Rurik, a sovereign over the ancient
Sclavonic republic of Novgorod, and gave their own distinctive appellation
of Russ to the people and to the c