rethren. His triumph was transient and premature. In the
various fortune of their piratical adventures, some Russian chiefs might
allow themselves to be sprinkled with the waters of baptism; and a Greek
bishop, with the name of metropolitan, might administer the sacraments
in the church of Kiow, to a congregation of slaves and natives. But the
seed of the gospel was sown on a barren soil: many were the apostates,
the converts were few; and the baptism of Olga may be fixed as the aera
of Russian Christianity. A female, perhaps of the basest origin, who
could revenge the death, and assume the sceptre, of her husband Igor,
must have been endowed with those active virtues which command the fear
and obedience of Barbarians. In a moment of foreign and domestic peace,
she sailed from Kiow to Constantinople; and the emperor Constantine
Porphyrogenitus has described, with minute diligence, the ceremonial
of her reception in his capital and palace. The steps, the titles, the
salutations, the banquet, the presents, were exquisitely adjusted to
gratify the vanity of the stranger, with due reverence to the superior
majesty of the purple. In the sacrament of baptism, she received the
venerable name of the empress Helena; and her conversion might be
preceded or followed by her uncle, two interpreters, sixteen damsels
of a higher, and eighteen of a lower rank, twenty-two domestics or
ministers, and forty-four Russian merchants, who composed the retinue
of the great princess Olga. After her return to Kiow and Novogorod, she
firmly persisted in her new religion; but her labors in the propagation
of the gospel were not crowned with success; and both her family and
nation adhered with obstinacy or indifference to the gods of their
fathers. Her son Swatoslaus was apprehensive of the scorn and ridicule
of his companions; and her grandson Wolodomir devoted his youthful zeal
to multiply and decorate the monuments of ancient worship. The savage
deities of the North were still propitiated with human sacrifices:
in the choice of the victim, a citizen was preferred to a stranger, a
Christian to an idolater; and the father, who defended his son from the
sacerdotal knife, was involved in the same doom by the rage of a fanatic
tumult. Yet the lessons and example of the pious Olga had made a deep,
though secret, impression in the minds of the prince and people: the
Greek missionaries continued to preach, to dispute, and to baptize:
and the ambassadors o