height in respect to productiveness; and
sunk again with a still greater rapidity, probably in consequence of
the political measures of the government. The year 1824 produced only
264 Russian works. The yearly average of literary productions,
original and translated, from 1800 to that time, is about 300 to 400.
This number perhaps will not strike the reader as so very small, if he
is informed that in the whole eighteenth century only 1000 works were
printed. Three hundred and fifty living authors were enumerated in the
year 1822; mostly belonging to the nobility, and only one eighth part
to the clergy. Their literary activity towards the end of this period,
and at the commencement of the next, was in a great measure confined
to works of fiction; especially novels end lyrical poetry. But at this
time a deeper interest in their national history began to be awakened.
This department indeed had never been entirely neglected; and more
than 10,000 manuscripts, unopened and unexamined, lay scattered
throughout the imperial and monastic libraries.

Nicholas Karamzin, from the commencement of whose influence this
period of Russian literature is in general dated, was born A.D. 1765.
He was educated in the house of a German professor at Moscow. In spite
of the early development of his literary propensities, he entered the
military service, which was then considered as the most honourable in
Russia. After two years spent in travelling through Europe, he opened
his literary career with the publication of a periodical work called
the Moscow Journal, which exercised a decidedly favourable influence
on Russian literature; although those productions of Karamzin himself,
which first appeared in this journal, evidently bear the stamp of the
author's youth. Both in his prose writings and in his scattered
lyrical poems, at this period, there is a certain dulcet
sentimentality, behind which we look in vain for energetic or true
poetic thoughts. He showed more maturity in his second periodical,
called the European Messenger; where political and moral subjects
occupied his pen. But his principal reputation rests upon his History
of the Russian Empire. In composing this work, he was greatly favoured
by the government; all the archives were opened to him; all documents
delivered into his hands; and when it was completed, rewards and
gratuities of every description were heaped upon the author with
imperial munificence, and continued to his widow