text:  The sceptre of the wild Tartar Khans was not as may be imagined much allied to the pen; the hordes of fierce and greedy savages which overran like the locusts of the Apocalypse for two centuries and a half the fertile plains of central and southern Russia contented themselves with exacting tribute from a nation which they despised probably too much to feel any desire of interfering with its language; and the dominion of the Tartars produced hardly any perceptible effect upon the Russian tongue