[6] The crown was not worn by the ancient Russian sovereigns, or “Grand Princes,” as they were called; the insignia of these potentates was a close skull-cap, called in Russian shapka, bonnet; many of which are preserved in the regalia of Moscow.  This bonnet is generally surrounded by the most precious furs, and gorgeously decorated with gems.

From the conversion to Christianity of Vladimir and his subjects—­passing over the wild and rapacious dominion of the Tartar hordes, which lasted for about 250 years—­we may consider two languages, essentially distinct, to have been employed in Russia till the end of the 17th century—­the one the written or learned, the other the spoken language.

The former was the Slavonian into which the Holy Scriptures were translated:  and this remained the learned or official language for a long period.  In this—­or in an imitation of this, effected with various degrees of success—­were compiled the different collections of Monkish annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above classes[7] were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of the Church and of learning.

[7] For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels, &c.  Two of the last-mentioned species of works are very curious from their antiquity.  The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Daniel, prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century; and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nikitin, merchant of Tver, made about 1470.

The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue.[8]

     [8] The only traces left on the language by the Tartar
     domination are a few words, chiefly expressing articles of
     dress.

It is to the reign of Alexei Mikhailovitch, who united Little Russia to Muscovy, that we must look for the germ of the modern literature of the country:  the language had begun to feel the influence of the Little Russian, tinctured by the effects of Polish civilization, and the spirit of classicism which so long distinguished the Sarmatian literature.