Petersburg, and Russian nobles went to Paris. And they learned more and more to think like the French.

That was an excellent thing, because the French were a very clever nation, and just now far advanced. Many books and plays, and poetry of all sorts, were being written. Besides that, they were the most highly civilised and well-mannered nation in Europe.

To

They taught the Russians many things. begin at the smallest, they taught them to be clean. For Elizabeth sent for French inspectors, who went round from cottage to cottage, and taught the peasants to keep their sacred pictures clean. Better than that, they tried to teach them not to get drunk. Elizabeth made a law that every one who was drunk should be beaten with the knout.

In one way she was unwise. For she persecuted people because of their religion. In that she might have taken a lesson, even from the reign of Anne.

Elizabeth made the punishment of criminals much less severe than it had been before her time. She would not have any one put to death, and torture was very seldom used. But in this too, as in many reforms, she could not manage to be entirely obeyed. Often the executioners knouted the people so severely that they died. It was the French who taught Elizabeth to be gentle.

She did much to make the towns beautiful and well ordered. They had narrow, dirty streets, paved with wooden beams. At night there was very little lighting, and sometimes tame bears, belonging to the people in the town, prowled about and did much damage. Elizabeth began to change that.

Also the houses were small, and badly built and dirty. Elizabeth invited French artists and sculptors, and they built many better houses, and taught the people how to build them. In St. Petersburg Elizabeth had a winter palace built. Better than that, she encouraged trade, and founded banks for the first time.

But the best thing that the French taught the Russians was learning. Elizabeth built many schools and colleges. The most famous was the University of Moscow. It was a mean little place at first, but it grew great, and now many learned men are educated there. Elizabeth obliged the children to go to school, which was an excellent thing.

Best of all were the books that the French brought in,-books of essays and history, and plays and poetry. The Russians read them eagerly, until their own minds were full, and then their own ideas began to grow. It was like sowing seed in the ground. The seed falls in, and takes root and sprouts, and the plant in its turn

bears seed. So the Russians in their turn began to write books.

That brings us back to Lomonossof.

He was the son of a fisherman who lived upon an island in the Icy Sea near Archangel. When he was quite a little boy he used to go out fishing with his father, and spend days and weeks on the sea.

But he was so eager to learn, that whenever he was at home he used to go off to an old clerk of the church near, who taught him to read and write. When he had learned all the clerk could teach him he said, "How can I be a learned man?" At that the clerk shook his head and said, "To be a learned man you must know Latin. That can only be learned at three places, and Moscow is one."

Then Lomonossof made up his mind that to Moscow he would go. He read all the books he could get hold of-a Psalm-book, a Grammar, and an Arithmetic.

One day, when he was seventeen, his chance came. A long train of wagons full of fish was going to Moscow. "Here's my chance," thought Lomonossof. So he got into one of the wagons, and went to Moscow.

When he reached Moscow, without friends and money, he did not know what to do. But a clerk who knew him happened to see him, and by a great deal of trouble sent him to school.

Then he was happy. He learned so hard and so well, that after six years he was sent to Germany. By that time his school-fellows began to think much of him. At first they called him "the great booby who wanted to learn Latin."

In Germany he was often hungry, and without money. There he began to write poetry. It was not very good poetry, but it was the first time that a Russian had tried to write poetry according to rules. He was the first to teach the Russians a good metre. And he wrote a book of rules for

writing poetry.

He did not live a good life, and often got into trouble. But little by little the Russians began to see how clever he was. At last he was made Secretary of State. And when he died many great men came to his funeral.

But his great and best deed was the encouragement he gave to the peasants to get learning. For they saw how great he was, and how small he had been. Not very long ago a Russian poet wrote this. It is supposed to be spoken to a peasant going to college :

“Are you dirty and barefooted ?
Are you cold and poorly clad?
Never mind, for such a journey
Many famous men have made.

N

You will learn how from Archangel
Once a peasant lad there came,

Who by God's will and his own will,
Got him wisdom, got him fame.”

There is not time to tell you of the many other Russian writers of Soumarokof the dramatist, and Prince Kantemir, and Trediakovski, and the others. But when Elizabeth died in 1762 the greatest work she left behind her was the Revival of Russian Learning.