(2) _Russian._--A quaint and probably trustworthy tradition tells how the Greek alphabet was imported into Russia. "Formerly," says John, Exarch of Bulgaria, who wrote in the ninth century, "the Slavonians had no books, but they read and made divinations by means of pictures and figures cut on wood, being pagans. After they had received baptism they were compelled, without any proper rules, to write their Slavonic tongue by means of Greek and Latin letters. But how could they write well in Greek letters such words as Bog, Zhivot, Zelo, or Tserkov, and others like these? And so many years passed by. But then God, loving the human race, had pity on the Slavonians, and sent them St. Constantine, the Philosopher, called Cyril, a just and true man, who made for them an alphabet of thirty-eight letters, of which some were after the Greek style, and some after the Slavonic language." The variety of sounds in Slavonic involved the addition of ten characters to Cyril's alphabet, and although that number was afterwards reduced, the Russian remains the most cumbersome and ungainly of alphabets. (3) _Coptic_, or, more correctly, the Coptic script of Egypt under the Romans. Notwithstanding the advent of Cæsar Augustus as Prefect of Egypt, Greek influence prevailed, and the native Christians, in transcribing the Coptic version of the Bible, used the Greek alphabet, borrowing some half-dozen of the ancient Egyptian demotic signs to express sounds unrepresented by the Greek. But, as throughout Mohammedan countries, Arabic has supplanted Coptic, which is now used only for liturgical purposes, "perhaps little if at all understood by the priests who have to use it in the services of the Church."