said at present to be the most flourishing, particularly in the commerce of grain to the Mediterranean.

The cities in the interior of Russia will not bear a comparison with those in the more civilized countries of Europe, either in buildings or population. In general, however, improvement is taking place, and agriculture, commerce, manufactures, and population are upon the increase. No country is more secure against foreign foes; it has no colonial drains; and its resources are too great to be lastingly injured by distant wars. Russia

can scarcely fail of being the future mistress of the north.

POLAND.

ALTHOUGH the modern political system of Europe has expunged the name of Poland from the catalogue of separate and independent sovereignties, yet the permanent marks of distinct language, manners, and face of country, still give it existence in a geographical view, and serve to discriminate its lacerated portions from the other parts of the dominions of those powers which have shared it among them. It may be added that Poland is too frequently met with in the pages of history to admit of its being consigned to oblivion.

By Poland then we understand that large tract of country, which has for its northern boundary the Baltic sea eastwards from Pomerania, and the gulf and province of Livonia; to the east it is separated from European Russia partly by an indistinct line, and partly by the river Dnieper; to the south from Little Tatary by some small streams; from Moldavia chiefly by the river Dniester; from Hungary by a chain of mountains ; and to the west, by no marked boundaries, from Germany. It lies chiefly between the 48th and 57th degrees of latitude, an extent of above 600 miles. Its average breadth is about the

same.

The general face of the country in Poland is remarkably level, its only mountainous tract being that bordering on the Carpathian chain, from which branches extend into the neighbouring districts. Other parts are diversified with hill and dale; but vast plains frequently occur, stretching beyond the reach of sight, and presenting continual ranges of thick forest, blackening the distant horizon. These forests particularly characterize the great dutchy of Lithuania, an extensive country on the north-east of Poland Proper, and formerly united with it by a federal league under a common sovereign.

The principal rivers of Poland are, the Warta, flowing parallel to the Silesian border, and at length uniting with the Oder in Germany: the Vistula or Wisla, rising in the Carpathian mountains, and after visiting in a long course the towns of Cracow, Warsaw, and Thorn, discharging its waters into the Baltic sea below the port of Dantzic: the Bug, a tributary to the Vistula from the middle of Poland: the Pregel washing the city of Konigsberg: the Przypiec, running through the centre of Poland in an opposite direction to the Bug, and joining the Dnieper on the Russian border. The Memel, Dnieper, Bog, and Dniester, are already mentioned among the Russian rivers.

Lakes are numerous in the north-eastern part of Lithuania and in Prussia. The sea-coast of the latter district is remarkable for two inlets of the sea, spreading into extensive but shallow sheets of water, and fenced from the waves of the Baltic by long narrow slips of land. These are named the Frische and the Curische Haf, the latter word being a technical name for such salt-water lakes.

The climate of Poland does not materially differ from that of Russia under similar latitudes. In the north the winters are rigorous, and the ports and sea-lakes are hard frozen. The south experiences a great degree of summer heat. The soil in such an extent is, of course, very various. Toward the coast of the Baltic it is generally shallow and sandy; but the profusion of wood, with which so much of Poland is overrun, indicates a prevalent strong and rich soil; and those parts in which agriculture has been favoured, are so productive as to become the chief granary of the north. The pastures of the southern parts feed cattle of great size. A large and ferocious breed of the ox, called the urus, runs wild in the forests of Lithuania, which also afford many other wild animals, such as the bear, the boar, the wolf, and the lynx.

The mineral products of Poland are scanty, as might be expected from the general flatness of the country. The tract bordering upon the Carpathian chain contains mines of copper, iron, and lead. At the extremity of a branch of these mountains, near Cracow, are the most extensive mines of rock-salt

in Europe. They are wrought under ground to a vast depth and compass, presenting spacious chambers, long galleries, massy pillars, and even whole edifices hewn in the solid rock, which, when illuminated by lamps, afford scenes of extraordinary splendour, from the reflection of the saline crystals. Another mineral product which Poland yields in greater abundance than any other known country, is amber. This fine bitumen is dug up from a considerable depth in the earth on the shore of the Baltic, especially on a neck of land formed by the Frische-Haf: it appears in lumps of different sizes, and affords an object of commerce, as a material for works of ornament and curiosity.

The human race in Poland is supposed to be of Tatarian origin, and has an Asiatic resemblance. The Poles are a people of lively appearance and manners. Those of the higher class possess considerable elegance of form and demeanour. They are accounted active, brave, and enterprising, but rash and unsteady. The peasantry have been so debased by servitude, that they are only remarkable for fawning submissiveness. The language is the Sclavonic, probably in greater purity than the Russian dialect, abounding more in consonants, and more difficult of pronunciation. It is copious and energetic, and has been cultivated by native writers; but as it is so little fitted for learned purposes, or communication with foreigners, the Latin language is of general use among persons of education, and is often spoken by innkeepers and others of the middle class. Jews are very numerous in Poland, and occupy most of the situations in the inland towns in which buying and selling are concerned.

The government of Poland, whilst it subsisted as an independent country, was a republic with an elective king at its head. The republican part consisted in an aristocracy of nobles, in whom all the civil authority was vested; the inhabitants of towns being without any share in the administration, and the peasantry mere vassals attached to the soil. Endless factions were the result of this ill-balanced constitution, which were aggravated by religious dissentions. The majority of the nation were catholics; but the separatists of the Greek church, and of

different sects of protestants, were numerous, and perpetual contests arose from the intolerant spirit of the establishment on one hand and the resentment and struggles for equality of the dissidents on the other. The sword was frequently drawn, foreign potentates were called in on each side, and the Poles became accustomed to look beyond their own country for protectors. The elections to the crown were effected under the influence of foreign arms or foreign money; and Poland fell from her rank among nations. At length three neighbouring powers, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, who had long interfered in her concerns, began, in the sight of all Europe, to appropriate to themselves portions of the country which lay contiguous to their own dominions. Finding their usurpations unresisted, they were encouraged to extend them; and finally they were not ashamed to divide the whole among themselves, and entirely abolish the kingdom of Poland, once regarded as the firmest bulwark of christendom against the arms of the Turks. This last transaction took place in 1794. Stanislaus, the last king of Poland, died a pensioner in Russia.

The loss of a constitution that doomed the mass of the nation to abject slavery, and the rest to anarchy and civil war, was little to be regretted; but the barefaced injustice of the act excited the ineffectual indignation of the rest of Europe. The friends of liberty particularly lamented that a new and greatly improved constitution, in which king and people concurred, was not permitted to be tried, but was expunged in the blood of its valiant supporters.

It now remains to take a view of the country in its present partitioned state.

The RUSSIAN part of the spoils has already been in a general way reckoned into the territories of that empire. In point of extent it surpasses either of the other shares. It consists of all the great dutchy of Lithuania, and the provinces which lie between the rivers Bug and Dniester, and the former Russian border; a country particularly valuable to Russia, as augmenting its European territories in those latitudes which enjoy the most favourable climate. Like the rest of Poland it bears all the