the mania for every thing foreign having overwhelmed the language with an infinity of terms rudely torn, not skilfully adapted, from every tongue; terms which might have been--have, indeed, since been--translated into words of Russian form and origin. A review of the literary progress made at this time will, we think, go far to establish our proposition; it will exhibit a very large proportion of translations, but very few original productions. From this period begins the more immediate object of the present note: we shall briefly trace the rise and fortunes of the present, or vernacular Russian literature; confining our attention, as we have proposed, to the Prose Fiction, and contenting ourselves with noting, cursorily, the principal authors in this kind, living and dead. At the time of Peter the Great, there may be said to have existed (it will be convenient to keep in mind) three languages--the Slavonic, to which we have already alluded; the Russian; and the dialect of Little Russia. The fact, that the learned are not yet agreed upon the exact epoch from which to date the origin of the modern Russian literature, will probably raise a smile on the reader's lip; but the difficulty of establishing this important starting-point will become apparent when he reflects upon the circumstance, that the literature is--as we have stated--divisible into two distinct and widely differing regions. It will be sufficiently accurate to date the origin of the modern Russian literature at about a century back from the present time; and to consider Lomonósoff as its founder. Mikháil Vassílievitch Lomonósoff, born in 1711, is the author who may with justice be regarded as the Chaucer or the Boccacio of the North: a man of immense and varied accomplishments, distinguished in almost every department of literature, and in many of the walks of science. An orator and a poet, he adorned the language whose principles he had fixed as a grammarian. He was the first to write in the spoken language of his country, and, in conjunction with his two contemporaries, Soumarókoff and Kheráskoff, he laid the foundations of the Russian literature. Of the other two names we have mentioned as entitled to share the reverence due from every Russian to the fathers of his country's letters, it will be sufficient to remark, that Soumarókoff was the first to introduce tragedy and opera, and Kheráskoff, the author of two epic poems which we omit to particularize, as not coming within our present scope, wrote a work entitled "Cadmus and Harmonia," which may be considered as the first romance. It is a narrative and metaphysical work, which we should class as a "prose poem;" the style being considerably elevated above the tone of the "Musa pedestris."