As for theological and biblical science, scarcely any thing interesting, certainly nothing gratifying, meets our eye in this vast deserted field. Except a few didactic works on dogmatics and rhetoric, several catechisms and similar productions, this department is limited exclusively to sermons, or rather synodal discourses. There is not always a want of talent, and sometimes even a rich share of natural power; but the language, though first developed in similar productions, is here so full of bombastic, tasteless, and mere rhetorical ornaments, that the _thought_ seems to be entirely drowned in them.
Demetrius Sjetchinof, metropolitan of Novogorod, ob. 1767, and the archbishop of White Russia, Konissky, oh. 1795, are considered as not being without eloquence. Platon Levshin, metropolitan of Moscow, was the most productive of the ecclesiastical writers. He died in 1812, and continued to write until the end of his life; his productions consequently, in respect to time, belong partly to the next period of Russian literature.[28] Anastasius Bratanofski, archbishop of Astrachan, ob. 1806, takes the first place among Russian ecclesiastical orators, in respect to style and command of language; though higher powers and profounder feelings are ascribed to an arch-priest of Kief, Ivan Levanda, ob. 1814. Here our catalogue terminates. All the remaining ecclesiastical writers of any distinction, although only a few years younger than those here mentioned, seem in respect to language to belong to the following period.
_From Karamzin, A.D._ 1796, _to the commencement of the reign of the emperor Nicholas in_ 1825.
The number of Russian writers increases during this period so considerably, that we feel more than ever obliged to limit ourselves to the most distinguished; thus, no doubt, passing over in silence many a name more deserving to be mentioned than others of the preceding periods, which borrowed a comparative lustre only from the poverty of the times.
The emperor Alexander, during the first years of his reign, showed a zeal for the mental cultivation and enlightenment of his subjects, which presented him to the eyes of admiring Europe in the light of one of the great benefactors of mankind. Whoever will take the trouble to follow the career of this prince closely, and contrast the shouts of acclamation with which the world hailed him at first, with the disesteem into which the same individual a few years afterwards shrunk, as a weak and insignificant being,--and then again compare the enthusiasm with which during the time of his better fortunes he was received anew as the deliverer of Europe, with the part which was afterwards assigned him in the system of _obscurantismus_ supposed to be adopted by the united sovereigns of Europe,--whoever considers all this, cannot but be struck with the small portion of discernment and discrimination which is manifested in the world. A sober and keen-sighted observer might have seen even in the beginning, glorious as it was, that not all is gold that glitters. All that was done, was accompanied with a noise and boasting which strangely imposed upon foreigners. Universities, on the plan of the venerable institutions of learning in Germany, were founded, where all the preparation necessary in order to profit by them was wanting; and the profoundest sciences were professedly taught to pupils, who were still deficient even in elementary knowledge. We do not however mean to say, that much real good was not done; and even if some of the new institutions were not propitious in their immediate results, still the time has come, or will come, when all of them are or will be at least in a measure useful. The establishment of numerous common schools of a less elevated character throughout the whole empire, deserves unqualified praise. More than fifty higher schools, called gymnasia or governmental schools, and twice as many lower or provincial schools, were established under Alexander's reign alone.[29]