In 1708 a Kieff government was founded which included the whole eastern Ukraine and an extensive region in Central Russia containing thirty-six towns—Orel, Kursk, &c. The Kieff lieutenant ship, founded in 1782, consisted of parts of the present governments of Kieff, Poltava, and Tchernigoff. In 1796 the present government was practically constituted, though several slight changes in regard to the district towns have since taken place.

Kieff, capital of the above province, the “mother city” and Canterbury of Russia, is situated on the right or western bank of the Dnieper, in 50° 26' N. lat. and 30° 37' E. long., 800 miles from St Petersburg, and 566 miles from Moscow on the highway between Moscow and Odessa. By railway it is connected on the one hand with Kursk and on the other hand with Odessa. The site of the greater part of the town consists of a succession of hills or bluffs separated from each other by ravines and hollows, the elevation of the central portions being from 350 to 365 feet above the ordinary level of the Dnieper. On the opposite side of the river the country spreads out low and level like a sea. Having by this time received all its important tributaries, the Dnieper is a large and navigable stream; but as it approaches the town it breaks up into two currents and forms a low grassy island of considerable extent called Tukhanoff. During the spring floods there is a rise of 16 or even 20 feet, and not only the whole island but the country along the left bank and the lower grounds on the right bank are laid under water. The bed of the river is sandy and shifting, and it is only by costly engineering works that the main stream has been kept from returning to the more eastern channel which it formerly occupied. Opposite the southern part of the town, where the currents have again united, the river is crossed by a wrought-iron bar-chain suspension bridge, which at the time of its erection (1851) was the largest enterprise of the kind in Europe. It is about half a mile in length and 52∣ feet in breadth, and the four principal spans are each 440 feet. The bridge was designed by Mr Vignoles, and the whole of the iron (3500 tons) employed in the construction was prepared in England. The cost was about £400,000?

Owing to the natural character of the site, Kieff is broken up into several distinct portions; and from no point is it possible to get a view of the city as a whole. Up to 1837 the town proper consisted of the Old Town, Petchersk, and Podυl; but in that year three districts were added, and in 1879 the limits were extended so as to include Kurenevka, Lukyanovka, Shulyavka, and Solomenka, and the whole was divided into eight districts. The administrative area of the town, as thus defined, is about 12,404 acres, or 18 square miles; but these figures give a very exaggerated notion of the place, as there are extensive suburbs and large intervals of unoccupied ground. Wood is still the most usual building material; no less than 64 ’ 68 per cent, of the houses existing in 1874 were of wood alone, and 14 - 75 per cent, of wood and stone. The number of clay huts is no less than 8 - 57 per cent.

The Old Town or Old Kieff quarter (Starokievskaya Tchast) occupies the highest of the range of hills. It is here that the houses are the most closely built, and that stone structures are most abundant. In some of the principal streets—as Vladimir’s, Vasiltchikoff’s—buildings of three to five stories, a comparatively rare thing in Russia, have been erected. In the 11th century the area was enclosed by earthen ramparts, with bastions and gateways; but of these the only remnant is the so-called Golden Gate. In the centre of the Old Town stands the cathedral of St Sophia, the oldest cathedral in the Russian empire. The statement frequently repeated that it was a copy of St Sophia’s in Constantinople has been shown by Zakrevski to be a mistake. The building measures in length only 118 feet, while its breadth is 173 feet. But if the plan shows no imitation of the great Byzantine church, the decorations of the interior (pictures, mosaics, &c.) indicate direct Byzantine influence. During the occupation of the church by the Uniats in the 17th century these were covered with a coating of whitewash, and a thorough-going restoration was rendered a matter of necessity; but the chapel of the Three Pontiffs has been left untouched to show how carefully the old style has been preserved or copied. Among the mosaics is a colossal representation of the Virgin, 15 feet in height, which, like the so-called “indestructible wall” in which it is inlaid, dates from the time of Yaroslaff. It was this prince who founded the church in 1037 in gratitude for his victory over the Petchenegs. His sarcophagus, curiously sculptured with palms, fishes, &c., is still preserved. The church of St Andrew occupies the spot where, according to Russian tradition, the apostle stood when as yet Kieff was not, and declared that the Kill would become the site of a great city. The present building dates only from 1744-1767. The church of the Tithes, restored in 1842, was originally founded in the close of the 10th century by Vladimir in honour of two martyrs whom he had put to death; and the monastery of St Michael (or of the Golden Heads—so called from the fifteen gilded cupolas of the original church) claims to have been built in 1108 by Svyatopolk II., and restored in 1655 by Bogdan Khmelnitski.

Up to 1820 the south-eastern district of Petchersk was the industrial and commercial quarter; but it has been greatly altered in carrying out fortifications commenced in that year by Nicholas I. Most of the houses are small and old-fashioned. The monastery—the Kievo-Petcherskaya —is the chief establishment of its kind in Russia; it is visited every year by about 350,000 pilgrims. From the books of the conventual inns it is shown that shelter is given to 150,000 persons per annum; and the numbers for whom there is no accommodation is often very great,— 72,000, for example, were counted lying under the open sky on the night of 15th August 1872. Of the ten or twelve conventual churches the chief is that of the Assumption. There are four distinct quarters in the monastery, each under a superior, subject to the archimandrite: the Laura proper or New Monastery, that of the Infirmary, and those of the Nearer and the Further Caves. These caves or catacombs are the most striking characteristic of the place; the name Petchersk, indeed, is connected with the Russian peshtckera, a cave. The first series of these caves, dedicated to St Antony, contains about eighty saints’ tombs; the second, dedicated to St Theodosius, about forty-five. The bodies were formerly exposed to view; but the pilgrims who now pass through the gloomy galleries, candle in hand, see nothing but the draperies and the inscriptions. Among the more notable names are those of Nestor the chronicler, and Ilia of Murom, the Old Cossack of the Russian epics. The foundation of the monastery is ascribed to two saints of the 11th century— Antony of Lynbeth, and Hilarion, metropolitan of Kieff. By the middle of the 12th century it had become wealthy and beautiful, but, completely ruined by Batu in 1240, it remained deserted for more than two centuries. Prince Simeon Oblkovitch was the first to start the restoration. A conflagration laid the buildings waste in 1716, and their present aspect is largely due to Peter I. The monastery contains a school of picture-makers of ancient origin, whose productions are widely diffused throughout the empire, and a printing press from which have issued a variety of liturgical and religious works, the oldest known examples bearing the date 1616.

The Podol quarter, as the name indicates, lies on the low ground at the foot of the bluffs. It is the industrial and trading quarter of the town, and the seat of the great fair of the “Contracts,” the transference of which from Dubno in 1797 largely stimulated the commercial prosperity of the city. The present regular arrangement of its streets arose after the great fire of 1811. Lepki district (from the lepki or lime trees, destroyed in 1833) is of recent origin, and is mainly inhabited by the well-to-do classes. It is sometimes called the palace quarter, from the royal palace erected between 1868 and 1870, on the site of the older structure dating from the time of Elizabeth. Gardens and parks abound; the palace garden is exceptionally fine, and in the same neighbourhood are the public gardens with the place of amusement known as the Chateau de Fleurs.

In the New Buildings, or the Luibed quarter, are the university and the botanical gardens. The Ploskaya Tchast ( Flat quarter) or Obolon contains the lunatic asylum; the Lukyanovka Tchast, the penitentiary and the camp and barracks; and the Bulvarnaya Tchast, the military gymnasium of St Vladimir and the railway station.

Kieff is the seat of the governor-general of the three provinces of Kieff, Podolia, and Volhynia, and as such possesses a large number of administrative institutions. In 1862 it was made the headquarters of a great military district including the same provinces. As a centre of intellectual activity it ranks among the principal cities of Russia. The university of St Vladimir, transferred from Vilna after the Polish insurrection of 1831, possessed 94 professors in 1878, and was attended by 771 students; and the library contained 150,000 volumes. The theological academy and theological seminary are large institutions; and the ordinary educational establishments include three male and four female gymnasiums. A daily paper, founded in 1864, and nine other periodicals are published in the town. Of the learned societies the more important are the medical (1840), the naturalists’ (1869), the juridical (1876), the historical of Nestor the chronicler (1872), the horticultural (1875), and the dramatical (1879), the archaeological commission (1843), and the society of church archaeology. There are three considerable theatres.

In 1862 the population of Kieff was returned as 70,341; of this number 8604 were Roman Catholics, 1411 Jews, and 976 Protestants. In 1874 the total was given as 127,251,—77'43 per cent, being members of the Greek Church, 10 , 85 per cent. Jews, 8 ’ 18 per cent. Catholics, and 2 - 45 per cent Protestants. The clergy— regular and secular—amounted to no less than 3505, Russian and its dialects were spoken by four-fifths of the inhabitants. For 1881 the total population is estimated at 165,000.

The history of Kieff cannot be satisfactorily severed from that of Russia. According to Nestor’s well-known legend it was founded in 864 by three brothers Ke, Shtchek, and Khoriff. It was in the waters of the Dnieper opposite the town that Vladimir, the first saint of the Russian Church, caused his people to be baptized; and Kietfbecame the seat of the first Christian church, of the first Christian school, and of the first library in Russia. For three hundred and seventy-six years it was an independent Russian city; for eighty years it was subject to the Tartars; for two hundred and forty-nine years it belonged to the Lithuanian principality; and for ninetyeight years to Poland. It was finally united to the Russian empire in 1667. In 1832 the headquarters of the first army corps, with all the departments of the general staff, were transferred to Kieff from Mogileff. The Magdeburg rights, which the city had previously c-joycd, were abolished in 1835, and the ordinary form of town government introduced; and in 1840 it was made subject to the common civil law of the empire.

A long list of works relating to Kieff will be found in Seπιenoff, Slov. Rost. Imp. Of more recent publication are the following:—Ram baud's La Russie épique, Paris, 1876; Avenarius, Kniga o Kieυskikh Bogatuiryakh, St Petersburg, 1876, dealing with the early Kieff heroes; Zakrevski, Opisanie Kieva, 1868; the materials issued by the temporary commission for the investigation of the ancient records of the city; Taranovtkii, Gorod Kieff, Kieff, 1881. See also Rambaud in,Aev. de Deux Mondes, 1874. The standard geological map of the government is TheophilaktofΓs (see Bull. Soc. imp. de Kat. de Moscow, 1872).

The name of Kiel appears as early as the 10th century in the form Kyi. Kiel is mentioned as a city in the next century; in 1242 it received the Lübeck rights; in the 14th century it acquired other privileges, and in 1363 entered the Hanseatic league. It suffered much from neighbouring barons; and in the wars in which Schleswig was involved Kiel had its share of siege and capture. In recent times the name of Kiel has been associated with the peace concluded in 1814 between Great Britain and Denmark, and Sweden and Denmark, by which Norway was ceded to Sweden.