Among the libraries of other countries, there is hardly
one of any importance, which has not like Codices of more or less
value to exhibit. Those of Vienna and the Vatican are in this
department especially rich. These two were thoroughly searched by a
like Commission.[21] Of the great activity, and the critical spirit
which the Russian historians of our day have shown in respect to their
own past, more will be said in our sketch of the Russian literature.
The number of the monuments of the Old Slavic increases considerably
in the _second_ period; and we find ourselves the more obliged to be
satisfied with mentioning only the most important among them. At the
head of these, stands the _Laurentian Codex_, the oldest existing copy
of Nestor's Annals, A.D. 1377, now in the imperial library at St.
Petersburg. Nestor, a monk in a convent near Kief, born A.D. 1096, was
the father of Russian history. He wrote Annals in the Old Slavic
language, which form the basis of Slavic history, and are not without
importance for the whole history of the middle ages. They were first
printed in A.D. 1767, and subsequently in four editions, the last in
1796. Schloezer, the great German historian, who published them anew in
1802-9, with a translation, added considerably to their intrinsic
value by a critical and historical commentary upon them.
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