Russia first appears in European history in the middle of the ninth century. Its climate and its soil had till then retained it in primitive barbarism. The sullenness of its winter had prevented invasion by civilised nations, and the nature of its soil, one immense plain, had given full scope to the roving habits of its half famished tribes. The great invasions which broke down the Roman empire, had drained away the population from the north, and left nothing but remnants of clans behind. Russia had no Sea, by which she might send her bold savages to plunder or to trade with Southern and Western Europe. And, while the man of Scandinavia was subduing kingdoms, or carrying back spoil to his northern crags and lakes, the Russian remained, like the bears of his forest, in his cavern during the long winter of his country; and even when the summer came, was still but a melancholy savage, living like the bear upon the roots and fruits of his ungenial soil. It was to one of those Normans, who, instead of steering his bark towards the opulence of the south, turned his dreary adventure to the north, that Russia owed her first connexion with intelligent mankind. The people of Novgorod, a people of traders, finding themselves overpowered by their barbarian neighbours, solicited the aid of Ruric, a Baltic chieftain, and, of course, a pirate and a robber. The name of the Norman had earned old renown in the north. Ruric came, rescued the city, but paid himself by the seizure of the surrounding territory, and founded a kingdom, which he transmitted to his descendants, and which lasted until the middle of the sixteenth century. In the subsequent reign we see the effect of the northern pupillage; and an expedition, in the style of the Baltic exploits, was sent to plunder Constantinople. This expedition consisted of two thousand canoes, with eighty thousand men on board. The expedition was defeated, for the Greeks had not yet sunk into the degeneracy of later times. They fought stoutly for their capital, and roasted the pirates in their own canoes, by showers of the famous “Greek fire.” Those invasions, however, were tempting to the idleness and poverty, or to the avarice and ambition of the Russians; and Constantinople continued to be the great object of cupidity and assault, for three hundred years. But the city of Constantine was destined to fall to a mightier conqueror. Still, the northern barbarian had now learned the road to Greece, and the intercourse was mutually beneficial. Greece found daring allies in her old plunderers, and in the eleventh century she gave the Grand-duke Vladimir a wife, in the person of Anna, sister of the emperor Basil II; a gift made more important by its being accompanied by his conversion to Christianity.