Then heralds were sent through the city saying: “Who will not be baptized, be he rich or poor, he will be hateful to me.” Vladimir went down with all the priests to the Dnieper. Great multitudes stood in the water, and the priests prayed and baptized them. Nestor says: “There was joy upon earth and in heaven, for many souls were saved that day.” After the sacred rite the people went their way, each man to his own home. In a like manner the inhabitants of each village and settlement were brought to Christianity, and Vladimir ordered churches to be built on the places where idols had been. After Kief, the turn came for the tribes east and west, as well as north. In Novgorod, where the old beliefs had their stronghold, the opposition was greatest, and when the first church was built the people tore it down straightway, but a skilful mingling of persuasion and force, together with the adhesion of the more important citizens, carried the day, and all Russia in time became Christian. Of course paganism lived on for many a year among the common people, as it did in other countries, and traces of it are still to be found in the folk-songs and different religious beliefs, survivals which are extremely interesting to the historian and philosopher. This sending of an embassy of wise men to examine and report on various religions, so that prince and people might have means of making the best choice, was a remarkable departure from previous methods, and stands quite alone in the history of European Christianity. It was the exact opposite of the method used south of the Baltic,—a method which gave such great profit to invaders. All Slav tribes between the Elbe and the Nieman, the Baltic and Bohemia lost independence, language, and race through the method by which Christianity was forced on them by Germans. If there were men among the conquered and Christianized who escaped, they were men who made themselves useful as assistant oppressors, and thus were received into the foreign aristocracy. Christianity, introduced first into Kief and then into Novgorod, extended later on the east and west of the Dnieper till, after Yaroslav’s day, it occupied all regions held by Russian princes. Vladimir had what the Russians love in a man: a broad nature. Occupied with serious work, he still found time for feasts. The celebration of victories and the consecration of churches were always accompanied by great banquets. These festivals took the place of pagan holidays. In all the songs of Vladimir’s time the feasts of the “Bright Sun of the Russian land” are ever remembered. So firmly did these ballads fix themselves in the popular mind, that not many years ago Hilferding, the president of the Slavonic Society at St. Petersburg, collected in the course of two months enough to fill an octavo volume of eight hundred double columns.