deserve mention. August Cieszkowski has written on philosophical and economic subjects. Moritz Straszewski, professor of philosophy at the university of Cracow, has also published some remarkable works.
Mention has already been made of the poetess Elizabeth Druzbacka. Female writers are not very common among Slavonic nations. Perhaps the most celebrated Polish authoress was Klementina Hoffmann, whose maiden name was Tanska, born at Warsaw in 1798. She married Karl Boromaus Hoffmann, and accompanied her husband, in 1831, to Passy near Paris, where she died in 1845. Her novels still enjoy great popularity in Poland. Of the poetesses of later times Gabriele Narzyssa Zmichowska (1825-1878), Maria Ilnicka, translator of Scott's Lord of the Isles, and Jadwiga Luszczewska may be mentioned.
A poet of considerable merit is Adam Asnyk (1838-1897). In his poetry we seem to trace the steps between romanticism and the modern realistic school, such as we see in the Russian poet Nekrasov. In some of the flights of his muse he reminds us of Slowacki, in the melody of his verse of Zaleski. Besides showing talent as a poet, he has also written some good plays, as “The Jew” (Zid), Cola di Rienzi, and Kiejstut. Other poets worthy of mention are Zagorski, Czerwienski, and Maria Konopnicka, who has published two volumes of poems that have been very favourably noticed. Mention must also be made of Balucki (1837-1901), author of novels and comedies, and Narzymski (1839-1872), who was educated in France, but spent part of his short life in Cracow, author of some very popular tales.
The four centres of Polish literature, which, in spite of the attempts which have been made to denationalize the country, is fairly active, are Cracow, Posen, Lemberg and Warsaw. A cheap edition of the leading Polish classics, well adapted for dissemination among the people, has been published, under the title of Biblioteka Polska, at Cracow. Not only are the professors of Cracow University some of the most eminent living Poles, but it has been chosen as a place of residence by many Polish literary men. The academy of sciences, founded in 1872, celebrated the bicentenary of the raising of the siege of Vienna by Sobieski by publishing the valuable Acta Joannis III. regis Poloniae. Some good Polish works have been issued at Posen. At Lemberg, the capital of Austrian Galicia, there is an active Polish press. Here appeared the Monumenta Poloniae historica of Bielowski, previously mentioned; but Polish in this province has to struggle with the Red-Russian or Ruthenian, a language or dialect which for all practical purposes is the same as the Southern or Little Russian. At Warsaw, since the last insurrection, the university has become entirly Russianized, and its Transactions are published in Russian; but Polish works of merit still issue from the press—among others the leading Polish literary journal, Biblioteka warszawska.
Perhaps the most popular modern writer in Poland is Eliza Orszeszko, of whose novels a complete “Jubilee” edition has appeared. Many of her tales—as, for instance, Argonauci (“The Argonauts”)—have appeared in the Tygodnik, or weekly illustrated journal of Warsaw. Meir Ezofowicz has enjoyed great popularity. The object of this tale is to bridge over the gulf between the Jew and Christian in Poland. Adolf Dygasinski writes clever vil age tales of the “kail-yard” school as it has been sometimes termed in England. Waclaw Sieroszewski has written Twelve Years in the Land of the Jakuts, a contribution to the literature of folk-lore and ethnology such as only a real artist could produce. Among the latest poets we may mention Wyspianski, Kisiliewski, Reymont, Mme Zapolska; the latter is the author of some powerful realistic novels and plays, and she has been called the Polish Zola. It is this kind of poetry and traces of the decadent school which we find in the later Polish poets. A pessimistic spirit is apparent, as in the writings of Wenceslaus Berent. Since the death of Asnyk and Ujejski the most prominent poet is Marya Konopnicka (1846). Some good critical work has been done in the leading reviews by Swietochowski and others. Historical work has been produced by Hirschberg, Pappée, Sobieski, Czermak and others, and the histories of Polish literature by Stanislaus Tarnowski and Piotr Chmielowski are of the highest value, the former dealing more with the aesthetic side of literature and the latter with the historical. The Poles are busy in reviving their great past. Hence the enthusiasm for historical studies, and the Biblioteka pisarzow polskich, which shows us what abundance of literature was produced in Poland in the 16th and beginning of the 17th century. In Henryk Sienkiewicz (q.v.), the historical novelist, Poland has a modern writer of European reputation.
Bibliography.—Pîpin and Spafovich, Istoria slavianskikh Literatur (in Russian; St Petersburg, 1879); Geschichte der polnischen Literatur von Dr A. Bruckner (Leipzig, 1901; also written in Polish); Chmielowski, History of Polish Literature (in Polish, 3 vols.); Stanislaus Tarnowski, History of Polish Literature (in Polish); Grabowski, Poezya Polska po roku 1863 (Cracow, 1903); Heinrich Nitschmann, Geschichte der polnischen Literatur (Leipzig, sine anno).
POLAND, RUSSIAN, a territory consisting of ten governments which formerly constituted the kingdom of Poland (see above), but now are officially described as the “governments on the Vistula,” or occasionally as the “territory on the Vistula.” It is bounded N. by the Prussian provinces of West and East Prussia, W. by those of Posen and Prussian Silesia, S. by the Austrian crown land of Galicia, and E. by the Russian governments of Volhynia, Vilna, Grodno, and Kovno.
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Physical Features.—The territory consists for the most part of an undulating plain, 300 to 450 ft. above the sea, which connects the lowlands of Brandenburg on the west with the great plain of central Russia on the east. A low swelling separates it from the Baltic Sea; while in the south it rises gradually to a series of plateaus, which merge imperceptibly into the northern spurs of the Carpathians. These plateaus, with an average elevation of 800 to 1000 ft, are mostly covered with forests of oak, beech and lime, and are deeply cut by river valleys, some being narrow and craggy, and others broad, with gentle slopes and marshy bottoms. Narrow ravines intersect them in all directions, and they often assume, especially in the east, the character of wild, impassable, woody and marshy tracts. In the south-eastern corner of Poland they are called podlasie, and are in a measure akin to the polyesie of the Pripet. The Vistula, which skirts them on the south-west, cuts its way through them to the great plain of Poland, and thence to the Baltic. Its valley divides the hilly tracts into two parts—the Lublin heights on the east, and the Sędomierz (Sandomir) or central heights on the west. These last are diversified by several ranges which run east-south-east, parallel to the Beskides of the Carpathian system, the highest of them being the Lysa Góra, which reach 1910 ft. and 2010 ft. above the sea. Another short ridge, the Chęcinski hills in Kielce, follows the same direction along the Nida river and reaches 1345 ft. south of the Nida, the Olkusz hills, linked on to spurs of the Beskides, fill up the south-west corner of Poland, reaching 1620 ft, and containing the chief mineral wealth of the country; while a fourth range, 1000 to 1300 ft. high, runs north-west past Częnstochowa, separating the Oder from the Warta (Warthe). In the north, the plain of Poland is bordered by a flat, broad swelling, 600 to 700 ft. above the sea, dotted with lakes, and recalling the lacustrine regions of north-western Russia. Wide tracts of sand, marshes, peat-bogs, ponds, and small lakes, among which the streams lazily meander from one marsh to another, the whole covered with thin pine forests and scanty vegetation, with occasional patches of fertile
