NESTOR, a person whose secular name is not known, was a native of Russia, and the earliest historian of the north. He was born at the town of Bielozero in the year 1056, and in the nineteenth year of his age he assumed the monastic habit, in the convent of Petcherski, at Kiew, and took the name of Nestor. He there made considerable proficiency in the Greek language, but appears to have formed his style and manner rather from the study of the Byzantine historians, Cedrenus, Zonaras, and Syncellus, than from that of the ancient classics. The time of Nestor's death has not been ascertained; but he is supposed to have lived to an advanced age, and to have died about the year 1115. His great work is his Chronicle, to which he has prefixed an introduction. In this work, after a short sketch of the early state of the world, taken from the Byzantine writers, he gives a geographical description of Russia and the adjacent regions; with an account of the Slavonian nations, their manners, their emigrations from the banks of the Danube, their dispersion, and their settlement in the several countries in which their descendants are now established. He then enters upon a chronological series of the Russian annals, from the year 858 to about 1113. His style is simple and unadorned, being such as best suits a mere recorder of facts; and his chronological exactness, although it renders his narrative dry and tedious, has enabled him to fix the era and to determine the authenticity of the events which he relates.