Joachim Lelewel, whose _literary_ activity belongs rather to the preceding period, while that now under consideration was partly the result of his _political_ career, lives still at Brussels, where he has recently published (1849) a work on the civil rights of the Polish peasantry. He attempts to demonstrate, that the oppression and the debased condition of this class came upon them along with the introduction of Christianity; and represents the Romish clergy, whose advantage it was to keep up this state of things, as the principal enemies of the peasantry. Lelewel's writings have wielded a more decided influence in Poland than those of any other modern author. The tendency of all his historical investigations, even when apparently without any such design, has been since the very beginning of the Russian dominion to undermine their power; and the great ability with which he contrived to veil hints, to disguise remarks, and to follow out under a harmless mask a certain and fixed purpose, had earned him twenty or thirty years ago the name of the "Jesuit of history." It remains now to give a general survey of the progress of Polish _belles-lettres_ during the last twenty years; and also of those mixed publications which excite a general interest. Here we must not omit to mention Witwicki's the "Evening Hours of a Pilgrim," [83] a book which, in a sprightly style and a peculiarly interesting way, gives a good deal of information as to the literary and mental condition of Poland, and the much-lauded revival of letters during the reign of Stanislaus Poniatowski.