A _bylina_, or historical ballad, chants the last scene in this eventful, care-laden life. In the Uspenski Sobor, “the Holy Cathedral of the Assumption, Saint Cyprian was chanting the mass. There, too, worshiped Dmitri of the Don, with his princess Eudoxia, his boyars, and famous captains. Suddenly ceased the prince to pray: he was rapt away in spirit. The eyes of his soul were opened in vision. He sees no longer the candles burning before the sacred pictures; he hears no longer the holy songs. He treads the level plain, the field of Kulikovo. There, too, walks Mary, the Holy Mother: behind her the angels of the Lord, angels and archangels, with swinging lamps. They sing the pæans of those who fell upon that earth, beneath the blade of the pagan. Over them she, too, lets fall the amaranth.—‘Where is the hero who stood here for his people and for my Son? He is to lead the choir of the valiant: his princess shall join my holy band.’ * * * * * * * In the temple the candles burned, the pictures gleamed, the precious jewels were bright. Tears stood in the grave eyes of our prince. ‘The hour of my departure is at hand,’ he said. ‘Soon I shall lie in unbroken rest; my princess shall take the veil, and join the choir of Mary.’” For from the days of Anne, daughter of Olaf of Sweden, and consort of the great Iaroslaf (1050), the wives of the Grand Princes, following the custom of the widowed empresses of Byzantium, had retired to a convent upon the death of their lords. * * * * * Dmitri, by compact with a number of his kinsmen, princes, had effectually secured the Muscovite succession to the eldest son, thus abolishing the old Slavic law, whereby the elder, were he son or brother of the deceased prince, entered upon it. So entire was the confidence, so genuine was the affection that he had inspired in the hearts of his countrymen—for he was, in effect, the Russian Washington—that his son Vasili (Basil) received upon his shoulders the “collar” and burden of government (1389) without opposition. His reign of thirty-six years proved that he had inherited his father’s skill and good fortune, if not fully his greatness of mind. The Donskoï had secured the virtual consolidation of the adjoining State of Vladimir, or Suzdal, with that of Moscow. The far-reaching territories of Novgorod the Great, too, were gradually being regarded as a part of the Grand Principality, notwithstanding frequent demonstrations of resistance from its people, who yet paid tribute to, and had chosen, from motives of policy, a succession of grand princes for their princes. The republic, after its humiliation by the Mongols, had warily parried the Muscovite encroachments by frequent alliances with Lithuania,[G] a realm much larger than organized Russia in the fourteenth century—whose tribes had been united by a succession of powerful native chiefs.