.finished an authol" can havebeen at the trouble of tnaking himself 

 an antiquary or a scholar, and condemn his lively imagination to 

 the dry study of the Ukases of Tzars and chronides of monas- 

 teries. 



It may appear singular in the nineteenth century, amid the im^ 

 jWrtant intei'ests which occupy the attention of Eurbpis; to agitate 

 questions of history, and to ask ourselves whether the empire of 

 Nicolas I. is the same as that of Ruric and Vladimir, the repre- 

 sentative of the Sclavonian race ? if, towards the thirteenth cen- 

 tury, a forgotten invasion of Tatars did not break that chain 

 which linked the Sclavonian populations to the dynasty of their 

 Kussian kings ? lastly, if Russia has at the present day a right to 

 claim as its domain and its patrimony the sovereignity of the dif- 

 ferent branches of the great family which covers almost the whole 

 of northern Europe ? and yet it is to this reunion that is now di* 

 rected the whole efforts of the policy of the Tzars. A question 

 which history would, however, soon answer in the negative, point- 

 ing to the thirteenth century as the period when Russia ceased to 

 be Sclavonian, will in future only be discussed on the field of battle 

 by the colossal power of Muscovy, which calls itself the Sclavonian 

 monarchy by excellence. The democratic institutions of the Sclavo- 

 nians— of Novogorod, the queen of cities-'-^f Kief, with its bazaars^, 

 its traders in the merchandize of the east, and its sumptuous edi- 

 fices, and of twelve other different governments, became confounded 

 with their conquerors, the Varec Russians, who first came from 

 Scandinavia under Ruric. They received the gift of Christianity 

 from Constantinople, and civilization began to make some progress 

 among them. 



In the twelfth century, the duchy of Vladimir and Touzdal, the 

 first Sclavonian colony, which rose amidst uncultivated lands and 

 impenetrable forests, overthrew Kief, The barbarians had not 

 power to keep their conquests. Touzdal fell under the effect of 

 intestinal dissensions ; there was nobody to oppose the invasions of 

 •the Tatars ; and, by the thirteenth century, the Sclavonian-Russian 

 state was no longer in existence. 



The history of Gallicia and Lithuania is still more complicated, 

 alternately under the power of the Poles, the Russians, and the 

 Tatars. They were subjected by the Hungarians, and afterwards 

 formed new and independent Sclavonian-Russian states. Lithua- 

 nia, with a population of Prussians and Podlaques of the same 

 origin as the Samogitians and Sclavonians, rose, as if by enchant- 

 ment, in the fourteenth century, under the hero Gedymin, con- 

 quered the north, shone for an instant, and then confounded itself 

 with Poland, which bore it down in its own ruin. In the beginning 

 of the fifteenth century, the king of Poland, master of Gallicia by 

 right of succession, of Kief and of the empire of Ruric by the 

 union of Lithuania, was the true representative of the Sclavonian 

 race ; and Muscovy, or the duchy of Touzdal, was then entirely 



