and judicious commentators on old manuscripts which they first published, and which but for them would still lie mouldering in dust and oblivion.  In the department of literary history and bibliography, we find as writers of merit, P. Koeppen, author of the well-written article “Kunst mid Alterthum in Russland” in the Vienna Jahrbuecher, and of various valuable paleographic and other essays in the Russian language; also Gretsch, Sopikof, Anastasevitch, the metropolitan Eugene above mentioned, 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 where no political tares could be sown among the grain.