Ye 
CARD’S HISTORY OF THE 
Some corroborations or corrections of 
their intelligence, may be gleaned from 
the chronicles (stepennye knigi), pedi- 
rees ( Rodoslovnje knigi ),and red books 
Rozradnye knigi); but the earliest do- 
cument preserved in the archives of the 
empire, dates from czar Andreas, who 
died in 1158. 
It is one part of the usual task of an 
historian, to record and to appreciate the 
’ fountains of his intelligence; but from 
the references attached to the chapters of 
this work, one would almost suppose the 
“haga part of these notorious particu- 
"Jars to have escaped our author’s know- 
ledge. The Latin historians of the six- 
teenth century, Leclerc and Leveque, 
Frenchmen, and Bayer, are his favourite 
vouchers, and from them he often quotes 
at second hand. Instead of compli- 
menting the Russian nation with an ori- 
ginal enquiry into its annals, which might 
contribute to inspire at Petersburgh and 
_ Moscow a solicitude about English opi- 
nion, we have a declamatory substitution 
of vague allusions, to novel or definite 
intelligence. Every thing is narrated, 
as by Gibbon, in abstractions. It is 
always the intrepidity, or the piety, or 
the cruelty, or the patience of the sove- 
reign, and never he himself, which pro- 
duces a given effect. As in a French 
epic poem, allegorical personages seem 
the only agents; thus all precision of 
assertion, all personality of information, 
is inconveniently eluded. Yet the style 
itself is highly polished, splendid, and 
impressive ; like the tragedy of Zingis, 
it abounds indeed with hard names and 
noisy lines. We have to hear 
¢* How ’gainst the Nirons the bold Naimans 
“< stood, 
¢* And red Taxartes foam’d with Omrah’s 
blood.” 
But if any dexterity of diction could 
prepare the public for receiving, with in- 
terest, an account of heroes and tribes, 
as yet so unknown to celebrity here, it is 
precisely a form of narrative, which has 
associated their mention with periods so 
spangled with sounding epithets, and 
rounded with polysyllabic terminations. 
_ We shall quote the account of the in- 
troduction of christianity : 
«« The first ray of evangelical light seemed 
to beam on the Russians under the reign of Os- 
kold, the prince of Kief; in one of those sud- 
den excursions of piratical adventure which 
perhaps had before alarmed the timorous 
(Greeks, the enterprizing Oskold marked out 
their magnificent city of Constantinople, as 
252 
the grand object pf his predatory ambition 3 
this daring attempt was made with two hun- 
dred boats, or Monoxyla as they are called 
by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogeni- 
tus. If the whole force of their country had 
been exerted, their navy perhaps might have 
amounted to two thousand vessels. Without 
opposition they passed the Thracian Bospho- 
rus. Lmboldened rather than satiated by 
this extraordinary success, they attempted 
and succeeded in occupying the port of Con- 
stantinople, under the reign of the Emperor 
Michael LIL. who had some time left his ca- 
pital with the vain hope of chastising the in- 
solence of the Saracens. On the first news 
of these unwelcome and dangerous visitors, 
he returned with his army-4o revive the faint- 
ing courage of his capital. The reader, who 
keeps in his remembrance a geographical 
view of Constantinople, and the situation of 
the Russians, can well imagine the numerous 
difficulties which the Emperor had to en- 
counter in effecting a landing at the palace 
stairs, from whence his superstition, that in- 
disputable offspring of fear, directed his agi- 
tated steps to a church of the Virgin Mary ; 
where the devout Emperor, with ‘his no less 
devout patriarch, passed the whole night in 
pryer; instead of meditating the relief of 
is people by a well determined spirit of zeal 
and patriotism. 
‘* By the injunctions of the patriarch, the 
garment of the Virgin Mary, a most precious 
relic, was drawn from the sanctuary and 
dipped into the sea; and their weak hearts 
fondly persuaded themselves, that by this act 
of futile devotion, the thunder-bolt of divine 
vengeanee would have been hurled against 
these bloody and fierce barbarians. A sea~ 
sonable tempest, however, released them from 
their present fears, by compelling the Russians 
to a precipitate retreat, which was most pi- 
ously attributed, by their blind credulity, to 
the propitious influence of the mother of 
God. Oskold, the chief of this expedition, 
after enjoying the glory of humbling the Greek 
pride, demanded a peace, which was readily 
granted by their dbjest fears, and perhaps 
from a secret, persuasion, that in a second 
critical juncture, the succours of their divine 
protectress might come too tardy. After the 
terms of the treaty had been adjusted, Oskold 
expressed a wish to receive the sacred waters 
of baptism. And, under his auspices, 4 
Greek bishop, with the name of Metropoli- 
tan, might for the first time have administer- 
ed the sacrament in the church of Kief: but 
the salutary vegetation of the gospel was 
biighted by the ungenial touch of these bar- 
barians; since, afier the death of Oskold, this 
short glimpse of holy light was soon involv- 
ed in a cloud of ignorance, so thick and hea- 
vy as to obscure almost. all traces of their 
christian conversion. 
«* Nor did this loathsome darkness disap- 
pear, until the Russian throne was mounted 
by the princess Olga. A woman (perhaps of 
the meanest extraction) who could punish 
REVOLUTIONS OF RUSSIA, 
