MOSCOW. 
199 
tunity offers; and always obtaining its point in 
the end.” He then spoke of Voltaire, and of his 
correspondence with the late Empress Cathe- 
rine. “ There was nothing,” said he, “ of which 
she was so vain, as of that correspondence. 
1 never saw her so gay, and in such high spirits, 
as when she had to tell me of having received a 
letter from Voltaire .” 
He conducted us to the apartments of the 
antient Patriarch, who founded the convent and 
who built the church ; these he had endeavoured 
to preserve in their pristine state. They con- 
sisted of several small vaulted Gothic chambers; 
now containing the library. We took this oppor- 
tunity to ask, if any translation of the Classics 
existed in the Sclavonic language, among the 
manuscripts dispersed in different libraries of 
the Russian monasteries. He answered us in 
the negative, and said they had nothing worth 
notice until the time of the Patriarch Nicon *. 
As he was well versed in the Sclavonic, we ques- 
tioned him concerning its relationship to the 
Russian. He assured us the two languages 
were almost the same; that the difference was 
only a distinction of dialect; and that neither of 
CHAP. 
IX. 
(2) The Patriarch Nicon, so illustrious in the Russian History, was 
born of obscure parents in 1613, ami died in 1681. See Levesque Hitt, 
tie Russie, tome IV. p.G9. 81. Hamb. Sf Brunswick, 1800. 
