doing this we shall content ourselves with noting, as briefly as
possible, the events which preceded and accompanied the birth of letters
in Russia, and the evolution of a literature not elaborated by the slow
and imperceptible action of time, but bursting, like the armed Pallas,
suddenly into light.

In performing this task, we shall confine our attention solely to the
department of Prose Fiction, looking forward meanwhile with anxiety,
though not without hope, to a future opportunity of discussing more
fully the intellectual annals of Russia.

In the year of redemption 863, two Greeks of Thessalonika, Cyril[3] and
Methodius, sent by Michael, Emperor of the East, conferred the precious
boon of alphabetic writing upon Kostisláff, Sviatopólk, and Kótsel, then
chiefs of the Moravians.

[3] Cyril was the ecclesiastical or claustral name of this
important personage, his real name was Constantine.

The characters they introduced were naturally those of the Greek
alphabet, to which they were obliged, in order to represent certain
sounds which do not occur in the Greek language,[4] to add a number of
other signs borrowed from the Hebrew, the Armenian, and the Coptic. So
closely, indeed, did this alphabet, called the Cyrillian, follow the
Greek characters, that the use of the aspirates was retained without any
necessity.

[4] For instance, the _j_, (pronounced as the French _j_), _ts,
sh, shtsh, tch, ui, yä_. As the characters representing these
sounds are not to be found in the "case" of an English