For the philological studies of the language, the foundation of the
Russian Academy. A.D. 1783, was of great importance. A standard
grammar and etymological dictionary were published by it in 1787-90,
founded on a plan perfectly new, and in the merit of which the empress
Catharine had no small personal share. Her example awakened not a
few Mecaenases among the _magnates_ of the country; and it became a
point of high ambition to favour literature and literary men.[27]

As for theological and biblical science, scarcely any thing
interesting, certainly nothing gratifying, meets our eye in this vast
deserted field. Except a few didactic works on dogmatics and rhetoric,
several catechisms and similar productions, this department is limited
exclusively to sermons, or rather synodal discourses. There is not
always a want of talent, and sometimes even a rich share of natural
power; but the language, though first developed in similar
productions, is here so full of bombastic, tasteless, and mere
rhetorical ornaments, that the _thought_ seems to be entirely drowned
in them.

Demetrius Sjetchinof, metropolitan of Novogorod, ob. 1767, and the
archbishop of White Russia, Konissky, oh. 1795, are considered as not
being without eloquence. Platon Levshin, metropolitan of Moscow, was
the most productive of the ecclesiastical writers. He died in 1812,
and continued to write until the end of his life; his productions
consequently, in respect to time, belong partly to the next period of
Russian literature.[28] Anastasius Bratanofski, archbishop of
Astrachan, ob. 1806, takes the first place among Russian
ecclesiastical orators, in respect to style and command of language;
though higher powers and profounder feelings are ascribed to an
arch-priest of Kief, Ivan Levanda, ob. 1814. Here our catalogue
terminates. All the remaining ecclesiastical writers of any
distinction, although only a few years younger than those here
mentioned, seem in respect to language to belong to the following
period.

FOURTH PERIOD.

_From Karamzin, A.D._ 1796, _to the commencement of the reign of the
emperor Nicholas in_ 1825.

The number of Russian writers increases during this period so
considerably, that we feel more than ever obliged to limit ourselves
to the most distinguished; thus, no doubt, passing over in silence
many a name more deserving to be mentioned than others of the
preceding periods, which borrowed a comparative lustre only from the
povert