entioned, Pletuef, Mussin-Pushkin, Korshavin,
Katchenofsky, etc. etc. The principal activity and success of this
school falls within the next period.

FIFTH PERIOD.

_From A.D. 1825 to the present time._

The reign of the emperor Nicholas opened with a bloody tragedy, which
concerns us here only so far, as the dissatisfied, effervescing,
unhealthy spirit of the literary youth of Russia was in a very
striking manner exhibited in it.

Several poets and men of some literary fame were among the
conspirators. Rileyef, Bestushef, and others, became the victims of
their imprudence. An analogous spirit had some years before banished
young Pushkin from the capital. It was evident, that the Russian muse
was no longer the good old gossiping lady in French court-dress and
hoops, who was ready to drop a humble courtesy to every person of rank
and influence; she was no longer the shepherdess who had inspired
Dmitrief with his sweet yet tame verses; she had been by the example
and the pernicious influence of the modern philosophical schools
gradually metamarphosed into a wild romantic girl, burning with desire
to drink freely, and without being watched by police agents, from the
true source of poetry open to all nations; to rove about in the world
of imagination free from fetters and restraint. The means which the
emperor chose to cure her from these eccentricities; to chain her at
home by endearing it to her; in short, to _Russify_ her again; were
certainly _judicious_.

We have seen that the spirit of historical and archaeological
researches, as well as the interest for the study of the Slavic
languages, was already awakened in the preceding period. The
government did every thing to favour it, and to nurse that truly
patriotic zeal which tries to penetrate the past in order to search
for those links which connect it with the present. All influence from
without was as much as possible checked; the professorships of
philosophy were abolished at all the universities (1827); the scissors
of censorship were directed to cut sharper; the catalogue of forbidden
books was made longer; the permission to travel was often denied, and
the term of lawful absence for a Russian subject confined to five
years. But in the interior, within the safe inclosure of the Chinese
walls of protection against the epidemic fever of the age, the most
energetic measures were taken to promote national education, and to
cultivate those fields of science wher