Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/114

 in religion, and in civilisation. The Lithuanian nobility, which had obtained equal rights with that of Poland, and whose representatives took their place at the side of the Poles in the Diet, were far inferior in ideas as well as in customs and manners to the Polish nobles, refined pupils of the Italian Renascence.

Polish civilising influences spread very rapidly over those Eastern territories, but this success was paid for very dearly by the checking, and even the retrogression, of intellectual development in Poland proper. On the other hand, the union with Lithuania opened a new period in Poland's foreign policy. The destruction of the Teutonic Order and the internal disintegration of the German Empire gave Poland comparative safety in the West. But the new frontiers of the State in the East and South-east were very troublesome and a source of frequent wars against Muscovy, the Tartars, and the Turks. In this new period Poland has more and more intercourse with the East, and eastern influences become strongly felt in the country. In the sixteenth century Poland was a great European country, closely associated with western life and taking a very active part in western intellectual movements, among others in the Reformation.

In the seventeenth, she gradually withdraws from Europe, becoming more and more isolated in her life as well as in her institutions. In the seventeenth century also there comes into the life of the country a new alien element in a large mass. The Swedish invasion and the long period of wars caused by it in the heart of the country, resulted in a considerable depopulation and opened a field for immigration. Then a great