long period. In this--or in an imitation of this, effected with various
degrees of success--were compiled the different collections of Monkish
annals which form the treasury whence future historians were to select
their materials from among the valuable, but confused accumulations of
facts; in this the solemn acts of Government, treaties, codes, &c., were
composed; and the few writings which cannot be comprised under the above
classes[7] were naturally compiled in the language, emphatically that of
the Church and of learning.

[7] For instance, sermons, descriptions, voyages and travels,
&c. Two of the last-mentioned species of works are very curious
from their antiquity. The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem of Daniel,
prior of a convent, at the commencement of the 12th century;
and the Memoirs of a Journey to India by Athanase Nikítin,
merchant of Tver, made about 1470.

The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not, as may be imagined, much
allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which
overran, like the locusts of the Apocalypse, for two centuries and a
half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia, contented
themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised
probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language;
and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect
upon the Russian tongue.[8]

[8] The only traces left on the _language_ by the Tartar
domination are a few words, chiefly expressing articles of
dress.

It is to the reign of Alexéi Mikháilovitch, who united Little Russia to