The _third_ period is the golden age of the Polish literature, and closes with the foundation of the schools of the Jesuits, A.D. 1622. The _fourth_ period comprises the time of the preponderance of the Jesuits, and ends with the revival of literature by Konarski, A.D. 1760. The _fifth_ period comprehends the interval from A.D. 1760 to the revolution in 1830. As the Polish literature of our own day bears a different stamp from that of former times, we may add a _sixth_ period, extending from 1830 to the present time. Before we enter upon a regular historical account of these different periods, we will devote a few words to the history and character of the language itself. The extent of country, in which the Polish language is predominant, is much smaller than would naturally be concluded from the great circuit of territory, which, at the time of its power and independence, was comprised under the kingdom of Poland. We do not allude to the sixteenth century, when Poland by the success of its arms became for a short time the most powerful state in the north; when the Teutonic knights, the conquerors of Prussia, were compelled to acknowledge its protection; and when not only were Livonia and Courland, the one a component part of the Polish kingdom, and the other a Polish fief, but even the ancient Smolensk and the venerable Kief, the royal seat of Vladimir, and the Russian provinces adjacent to Galicia, all were subjugated by Poland. We speak of this kingdom as it was at the time of its first partition between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Of the four or five millions of inhabitants in the provinces united with Russia at the three successive partitions of 1772, 1793, and 1795, only one and a half million are strictly Poles, that is, Lekhes, who speak dialects of that language;[5] in White and Black Russia, the Russniaks are by far more numerous; and in Lithuania the Lithuanians. Besides the independent language of these latter, the Malo-Russian and White Russian dialects are spoken in these provinces; and all documents of the grand-duchy of Lithuania before it was united with Poland in A.D. 1569, were written in the latter.[8] The Polish language is farther spoken: 1) By the inhabitants of the kingdom of Poland formed in 1815, three and a half millions in number, or reckoned together with the Poles of the Polish-Russian provinces, five millions; 2) By the inhabitants of the cities and the nobility of Galicia, belonging to Austria, and the Poles in the Austrian part of Silesia, about three millions; 3) By the inhabitants of the small republic of Cracow, about one hundred thousand; 4) By the inhabitants of the Prussian grand-duchy of Posen, and a part of the province called Western Prussia, together with the Poles in Silesia and the Kassubes in Pomerania; In all less than two millions.[7]