nal songs are carried on through the troublous times of
Boris Godunov, and the false Dimitri, to the days of Peter the
Great, when they seem to have acquired new vigour on account of
the military achievements of the regenerator of his country. Nor
are they extinct in our own time, for we find exploits of Napoleon,
especially his disastrous expedition to Russia, made the subject
of verse. The interest, however, of these legendary poems fades
away as we advance into later days. The number of minstrels is
rapidly diminishing; and Riabanin, and his companions among the
Great Russians, and Ostap Veresai among the Malo-Russians, will
probably be the last of these generations of rhapsodists, who have
transmitted their traditional chants from father to son, from tutor
to pupil. A great feature in Russian literature is the collection
of chronicles, which begin with Nestor, monk of the Pestcherski
Cloister at Kiev, who was born about A. D. 1056, and died about
1116.

During the time when Russia groaned under the yoke of the Mongols,
the nation remained silent, except here and there, perhaps, in some
legendary song, sung among peasants, and destined subsequently
to be gathered from oral tradition by a Ribnikov and a Hilferding.
Such literature as was cultivated formed the recreation of the
monks in their cells. A new era, however, was to come. Ivan III.
established the autocracy and made Moscow the centre of the new
government. The Russians naturally looked to Constantinople as
the centre of their civilization; and even when the city was taken
by the Turks its influence did not cease. Many learned Greeks fled
to Russia, and found an hospitable reception in the dominions of
the Grand Duke. During the reigns of Ivan the Terrible and his
immediate successors, although the material progress of the country
was considerably advanced, and a strong Government founded, yet
little was done for learning. Simeon Polotzki (1628-80), tutor
to the Tsar Feodor, son of Alexis, was an indefatigable writer
of religious and educational books, but his productions can now
only interest the antiquarian. The verses composed by him on the
new palace built by the Tsar Alexis, at Kolomenski are deliciously
quaint. Of a more important character is the sketch of the Russian
government, and the habits of the people, written by one Koshikin
(or Kotoshikin--for the name is found in both forms), a renegade
diak or secretary, which, after having lain for a long