Their first establishment consisted of a strict republic
of warriors; no female was admitted into their strongholds on the
islands of the Dnieper. By degrees they relaxed; and began with
keeping their families in villages in the vicinity, where they spread
with incredible rapidity. Then a line of separation was drawn between
the inhabitants of the settlements, and the Zaporogueans in the
castles; none of these latter were allowed to marry. Thus their youth
were always ready for the enemy; and the distinction was only dropped
in more peaceful times. They kept themselves independent of Russia
until the latter part of the seventeenth century; but their more
dangerous enemies had long been the Poles, their north-western
neighbours. It was the period of Poland's glory. The Poles were
conquerors in the North and in the East. At last the Kozaks, after a
century of struggles, acknowledged the authority of the Polish
sovereign Stephan Bathori (ob. 1586); moved partly, it is said in
their traditions, by the personal grandeur of that chevaleresque
monarch. But now the Polish nobility overspread the Ukraine. They
became land-owners and oppressors; and their stewards, their still
more detested assistants. They were followed by the Jesuits; who
alternately by persuasion and compulsion attempted to entice the
natives, who all belonged to the Greek church, to come under the
dominion of the Pope. A war of religious persecution and resistance
arose. The Kozaks ultimately revolted in 1648; and a few years after
(in 1654) their Hetman Chmielnitzky submitted himself and the whole
Ukraine to Tzar Alexei, the father of Peter I.

The struggles of this insurrection, their previous feuds with the
Poles their oppressors, and afterwards their repeated revolts from the
Russians, who tried to undermine their liberties, have given birth to
a great number of simple ballads, the bold spirit of which presents a
noble relief to the habitual melancholy of Malo-Russian poetry in
general. They have professional singers, who are called
_Bandurists_; and who, with a kind of simple guitar in their hand,
ramble through the country, sure to find a willing audience in
whatever village they may stop. Their ballads are of course not
confined to the scenes of the earlier centuries; the more recent wars
with the Turks and Tartars also, and the campaigns made in modern
times in the service of Russia, present subjects enough of interest;
for their productiveness is st