296 EUSSIA IN EUEOPE. 



thousands of these poems there are few that will cause the maiden to blush, but 

 many which will bring tears to her eyes ; for they are mostly cast in a melancholy 

 strain, the poetic expression of a people long overwhelmed with misfortune, and 

 who love to brood over their sufferings. Nevertheless the collections contain many 

 ballads betraying an angry and revengeful spirit. These songs, whose authors 

 are unknown, and which are handed down from generation to generation mostly 

 by blind rhapsodists, already form a precious literature, though not the only 

 treasure of Little Russian, which has never ceased to be a cultivated language. In 

 it is entirely composed the Chronicle of Volhynia, the most poetic of all national 

 annals, and since the sixteenth century it has acquired great literary importance. 

 One of its most distinguished modern writers is the famous poet Shevshenko, long 

 a serf and a soldier, who sings of the miseries of his people, and speaks to them of 

 "justice and freedom " to come. 



The Little Russians display an enlightened spirit, and statistics show that 

 scientific works circulate more widely amongst them than in Great Russia. 

 Muscovy formerly received her teachers from Ukrania, and academies flourished 

 at Ostrog, Kiev, and Chernigov before the Great Russians owned a single high 

 school. Yet Ukrania now possesses relatively the least number of schools and 

 students in Russia. This deplorable result must be attributed to the enforced 

 introduction of a foreign language into the schools. The centralizing spirit 

 extends even to the speech of the people ; the Little Russian tongue is discouraged 

 by the Muscovite Government, and all literary efforts to revive it are severely 

 suppressed. Journals, theatrical representations, conferences, even translations of 

 religious and scholastic works are now forbidden, and the very text of musical 

 publications expurgated of all Little Russian expressions. But the attempt must 

 fail to crush a language spoken by 20,000,000, of whom 3,000,000 dwell across 

 the frontier in Galicia, Bukoviua, and Hungary. It has four chairs in the 

 University of Lvov, Avhere translations of Byron and Shelley have been brought 

 out, besides twelve periodicals circulating in Austria. It is said to be spoken 

 most correctly in the governments of Poltava, Yekaterinoslav, and the south of 

 Kiev and Chernigov, being elsewhere much mixed with Polish and Russian 

 expressions, though otherwise everywhere spoken with singular uniformity 

 throughout its wide domain. 



The land question is all the more important in Ukrania that large estates are 

 of quite recejit origin. The people still remember when the soil belonged to 

 them, and since the local revolts inspired by the Polish insurrection of 1863, 

 the Government has found it necessary to secure them a certain share — in 

 Poltava about 5 acres per family, over 6 in Kiev, and in New Russia from 

 9 to 18. 



The communal spirit, which seemed to have disappeared from Little Russia, 

 has revived to a remarkable extent since the emancipation of the serfs. Associa- 

 tions of reapers, mowers, fishers, everywhere recall those of the old Zaporogs, 

 except that instead of working on their own account, they are mostly employed by 

 contractors. But in some districts the peasants lease their lands to the nobles, in 



