ing and
evening, and took great interest in copying the sacred books with his
own hands.

The closing years of life this illustrious prince passed in repose and
in the exercises of piety, while he still continued, with
unintermitted zeal, to watch over the welfare of the state. Nearly all
the pastors of the churches were Greeks from Constantinople, and
Yaroslaf, apprehensive that the Greeks might acquire too much
influence in the empire, made great efforts to raise up Russian
ecclesiastics, and to place them in the most important posts. At
length the last hours of the monarch arrived, and it was evident that
death was near. He assembled his children around his bed, four sons
and five daughters, and thus affectingly addressed them:

"I am about to leave the world. I trust that you, my dear children,
will not only remember that you are brothers and sisters, but that you
will cherish for each other the most tender affection. Ever bear in
mind that discord among you will be attended with the most funereal
results, and that it will be destructive of the prosperity of the
state. By peace and tranquillity alone can its power be consolidated.

"Ysiaslaf will be my successor to ascend the throne of Kief. Obey him
as you have obeyed your father. I give Tchernigof to Sviatoslaf;
Pereaslavle to Vsevolod; and Smolensk to Viatcheslaf. I hope that each
of you will be satisfied with his inheritance. Your oldest brother, in
his quality of sovereign prince, will be your natural judge. He will
protect the oppressed and punish the guilty."

On the 19th of February, 1054, Yaroslaf died, in the seventy-first
year of his age. His subjects followed his remains in tears to the
tomb, in the church of St. Sophia, where his marble monument, carved
by Grecian artists, is still shown. Influenced by a superstition
common in those days, he caused the bones of Oleg and Yaropolk, the
two murdered brothers of Vlademer, who had perished in the errors of
paganism, to be disinterred, baptized, and then consigned to Christian
burial in the church of Kief. He established the first public school
in Russia, where three hundred young men, sons of the priests and
nobles, received instruction in all those branches which would prepare
them for civil or ecclesiastical life. Ambitious of making Kief the
rival of Constantinople, he expended large sums in its decoration.
Grecian artists were munificently patronized, and paintings and
mosaics of exquisite workmansh