VILNA. The capital of the Government and the Governor-Generalship of Vilna. in Western Russia, situated at the confluence of the Vileika with the Vilia, 430 miles south-southwest of Saint Petersburg (Map: Russia, C 4). It is an old city irregularly built and unsatisfactory in its sanitary arrangements. Its most interest ing ecclesiastical edifices are the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Saint Stanislaus with the silver coffin of Saint Casimir, the Greek Catholic Cathe dral of Saint Nicholas, and the Greek orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin. Vilna is well provided with educational institutions which include a Greek Orthodox and a Roman Catholic seminary, an archaeological museum with a library, and a municipal theatre. In the suburbs are a number of ancient monas teries and churches and the ruins of the eastle of the Jagellons. Vilna manufactures tobacco, knit goods, articles of apparel, artificial flowers, gloves. etc. The extensive commerce in grain
and timber is favored by the position of Vilna at the intersection of three important railway lines and on a navigable river. Population, in 1889, 109.329; in 1897, 159,508, nearly 50 per cent. Jewish and the rest Lithuanian, Polish, and Russian.
Vilna was probably founded in the tenth cen tury. but it became prominent only as the capi tal of Lithuania under Gedimin (about 1323). It obtained Nlagdeburg rights from Jagellon,and had a printing-press as early as 1519. During the seventeenth century it was nearly ruined in the struggle between Russia and Poland. It wax annexed to Russia in 1795. In 1803 a university was established at Vilna and sup pressed for political reasons in 1832. The in habitants of the city welcomed Napoleon in 1812 and took a prominent part in the Polish uprisings of 1830.31 and 1803.