e Russian educated classes
adopted something of the fashionable philosophy. They were peculiarly
unfitted to resist that hurricane of "enlightenment" which swept over
Europe during the latter half of the eighteenth century, first
breaking or uprooting the received philosophical systems, theological
conceptions, and scientific theories, and then shaking to their
foundations the existing political and social institutions. The Russian
Noblesse had neither the traditional conservative spirit, nor the firm,
well-reasoned, logical beliefs which in England and Germany formed a
powerful barrier against the spread of French influence. They had been
too recently metamorphosed, and were too eager to acquire a foreign
civilisation, to have even the germs of a conservative spirit. The
rapidity and violence with which Peter's reforms had been effected,
together with the peculiar spirit of Greek Orthodoxy and the low
intellectual level of the clergy, had prevented theology from
associating itself with the new order of things. The upper classes had
become estranged from the beliefs of their forefathers without acquiring
other beliefs to supply the place of those which had been lost. The
old religious conceptions were inseparably interwoven with what was
recognised as antiquated and barbarous, whilst the new philosophical
ideas were associated with all that was modern and civilised. Besides
this, the sovereign, Catherine II., who enjoyed the unbounded admiration
of the upper classes, openly professed allegiance to the new philosophy,
and sought the advice and friendship of its high priests. If we bear
in mind these facts we shall not be surprised to find among the Russian
nobles of that time a considerable number of so-called "Voltaireans"
and numerous unquestioning believers in the infallibility of the
Encyclopedie. What is a little more surprising is, that the new
philosophy sometimes found its way into the ecclesiastical seminaries.
The famous Speranski relates that in the seminary of St. Petersburg one
of his professors, when not in a state of intoxication, was in the habit
of preaching the doctrines of Voltaire and Diderot!

The rise of the sentimental school in Western Europe produced an
important change in Russian literature, by undermining the inordinate
admiration for the French pseudo-classical school. Florian, Richardson,
Sterne, Rousseau, and Bernardin de St. Pierre found first translators,
and then imitators, and soon the l