the Roman Catholic church, and the literature of its particular dialect has been modified by the Catholic priests, and is termed the Glagolitic. The Servians and Slavonians of the Greek church continue to use the Cyrillic alphabet unchanged.*

B. Of the Croats.

The Croats are chiefly the inhabitants of the Austrian kingdom of Croatia. The Croat language is intermediate between the Servian and the Windish.

C. The Winds or Slovenzi.

The Slavic inhabitants of Carinthia, Carniola, Stiria, and of Eisenburg and Saala in Hungary, about 300,000 in number, call themselves Slovenzi. By foreigners they are generally called Vindes or Windes. The Slavic settlements in Carniola took place very early, certainly not later than the fifth century. It has been lately proved that this part of the Slavic race was first acquainted with the use of letters, probably even before the time of Cyril. Several very old MSS. have been discovered in it in the library at Munich. According to Kopitar, a writer of great celebrity on the Slavic antiquities, the true home of the old Slavonic church language is to be found among the Pannonian Slavi, the Slovenzi or Winds, and it was for them that the old Slavonic Bible was translated.† But the liturgy of Methodius was soon supplanted in this country by the Roman Catholic ritual.‡

SECTION III. Of the Western Slavic Nations.

To the western division of the Slavic race belong the Bohemians, the Slovaks, the Poles, the Sorabians and the Northern Wends.

We have observed that all or nearly all the Eastern Slavi,

* Schaffarik,-Bibl. Repos. ubi supra.

+ Kopitar, the author of a learned paper in the "Wiener Jahrbücher" on Slavic literature, Ann. 1822. He maintains that the Slovenzi or Wends were the diocesans of Methodius, for whose use he and Cyril translated the Bible, and that these two brethren, at a later period, carried it to the Servians, who understood it and used it. Dobrowsky thought it was originally made for the Servians. See the opinions of these writers discussed in the Andover Bibl. Repos. 1834, p. 347.

A new version of the whole Bible in this language was published in 1800 at Laibach in five volumes.

including the Russians and those tribes who passed the Danube and settled in Servia, Croatia, and the Austrian provinces, obtained the rudiments of civilisation, and the first instruction in the Christian faith, from missionaries of the Greek Church. In the latter provinces the Church of Rome afterwards modified the ecclesiastical discipline first introduced, and changed the literature of Cyril and Methodius into what is called the Glagolitic. But the Western Slavi owe their earliest instruction to missionaries from Rome, who introduced the light of Christianity and the blessings of civilisation among the Bohemians and the Poles. The northern Wends, as well as their neighbours in Prussia of a different race, were subdued by the arms of the Saxons and the Teutonic knights.

1. The Tschechi or Bohemians.

The language of the Bohemians has been the most cultivated among all these dialects. Christianity was introduced among the Bohemians during the latter part of the ninth century, and doubtless with it the knowledge of letters. The oldest specimen, however, that is extant of the Bohemian language is a short hymn of Bishop Adalbert, which, somewhat modified, is still sung in some of the churches of Bohemia: it is given by Dobrowsky in the work already cited. The earliest Bohemian chronicler was Dalemil, who wrote his chronicle in rhyme, about 1310. In the same century the first Bohemian version was made, of which a copy in a parchment manuscript is preserved in the royal library of Dresden. From that time the culture of the Bohemian language and manners improved after German models, and attained its highest refinement under Rudolph.

The interval between 1577 and 1610 was the Augustan age of Bohemia. The literature, together with the national spirit of the people, fell into decay at the close of that period, and became almost extinct during the thirty years' war. The Bohemians were termed by other Slaves, Tschechi or Chechi, which, according to Dobrowsky, means the foremost; describing, apparently, the local position of this tribe in relation to the great body of the nation. Bohemia, as it is well known, is the name, not of the people but of the country, which ob

tained this term when inhabited by the Celtic Boii, who were succeeded by the German Marcomanni, as were the latter by the Moravians. The Slavonians occupied Bohemia about the middle of the sixth century, after the destruction of the Thuringian kingdom, in which Bohemia was probably included.

The Moravians are nearly akin to the Tschechi or Bohemians. Their dialects are said to be merely varieties of the Bohemian language. The Moravians take their name from the river Morava : they give to their idiom the term of Morawsky gazyk, and decline that of Czechy gazyk, or the Bohemian speech.

The Slavonian inhabitants of Moravia are in several divisions, and have various dialects. The first, or Hannaks, taking their name from the river Hanna, are the agricultural peasantry of the province. The Slovaks or Slavaks are the Slavonian people who inhabit the eastern frontier of Moravia and some of the upper districts of Hungary.*

2. The Slovaks. +

The Slovaks are a Slavic people who inhabit the northwestern parts of Hungary. Colonists of the same race are also scattered over all the other parts of that country. Before the arrival of the Magyars or of the Hungarian nation, the principal inhabitants of Hungary or Pannonia were of the Slavic race. At what exact period they entered it is uncertain. In early times the Sarmatæ Limigantes or Jazyges Metanasta, between the Danube and the Theiss, invested the Byzantine empire on that side, but their name soon disappears; and in the ninth century, already converted to Christianity, we hear of the Slovaks, whose designation has the same import and who may be the same people, in the region adjacent to the Waag and Gran, within the short-lived Slavonian kingdom of Great Moravia.

*The idiom of the Moravians and Slavonians of Upper Hungary are so near to, or rather identical with the Bohemian, that one grammar is applicable to all of them. The grammar of Franz Trnka, published at Vienna in 1832, is thus entitled: "Theoretisch-Practisches Lehrbuch der Slawischen Sprache in Böhmen, Mähren und Ober-Ungarn, &c."

The Slovaks must not be confounded with the Slovenzi, a branch of the Eastern Slavi before described.

The rest of Pannonia was inhabited by more warlike Turkish tribes, the Bulgarians and the Khazars. In 894 the Magyars conquered Pannonia and drove the Slovaks into the mountainous parts, while they settled themselves in the plains. The Slovaks continue to inhabit that part of Hungary within the Theiss: they are about 1,300,000 Catholics and 500,000 Protestants.

The Slovakian dialect is nearly related to the old Slavonic; the region about the Carpathian mountains, the seat of the ancient as well as modern Slovaks, having been the centre whence the Slavic nations, now spread through Eastern Europe, issued. The Slovakian dialect, according to Dobrowsky, approaches likewise to the oldest forms of the Bohemian, and is the link which unites it with the Croat and Windish, and it thus forms a bond of connexion between the eastern and western stems of the great Slavic race.

3. The Lechs or Poles.

The Lechs or Lechi were a Slavic people who occupied the country on the Vistula and Warta in the sixth or seventh century. Their name, Lekh or Ljakh, signified "free or noble men," a meaning which it still retained in the Bohemian in the fourteenth century. The Lechs were divided into several tribes, of which, according to Nestor, those only who dwelt on the vast plains-polie—of the Ukraine were at first called Polyane, Poles; that is, inhabitants of the plains. The tribes who occupied Massovia were called Masowshane, the Lekhs who went to Pomerania, Pomeriane; the name of Poles became general about the tenth century. In 840, the chiefs of the different Lechish tribes united themselves under one head and chose a peasant named Pjast for their duke, whose posterity reigned six hundred and thirty years. From Germany and Bohemia Christianity was conveyed to Poland in the ninth century. According to Dobrowsky the forms of the Latin church were adopted generally in 965. The Polish language was despised as the dialect of the illiterate.

Adelung distinguishes as dialects of the Polish, the Masovian and the Kassubian; the latter is spoken in Pomerania, Lunenburg, and West Prussia.

VOL. III.

EE

The Polish language is spoken by a population of about ten millions.* In many parts of Poland other races and languages prevail, as the Russniak in White and Black Russia, the Lithuanian in Lithuania. These countries were subjected by the Poles, to whom at one period even the ancient Smolensk, and Kiew, the royal seat of Vladimir, belonged.

4. Of the Sorabians and Northern Wends.

When the Burgundians, Suevi, Heruli, and other Northern German tribes moved towards the south to inundate the Roman empire, they left an extensive region on the Baltic coast either wholly destitute of inhabitants, or so thinly peopled as to afford a ready entrance to numerous bands of the Slavic stem, who passed over the Vistula and occupied the vacant space. Tribes of the new race spread themselves along the sea border from the mouth of the Vistula to that of the Elbe. They established independent communities through Northern Germany, which maintained their freedom for centuries. They built on the coast of the Baltic at the mouths of rivers many flourishing towns, carried on commerce, improved in the arts, and appear to have learnt from their German neighbours the use of Runic letters, but rejected Christianity and true civilisation. In some of these towns they erected temples adorned with barbaric magnificence to their pagan gods. Rhetra contained the shrine of their idol Rhadagast, whose image was not long since discovered at Prilwitz. Hamburg was a town of the Slavic tribe of the Obotrites; Weneta, at the mouth of the Oder, was a city of great extent and wealth, and the principal emporium of the Baltic trade. Remains of marble and alabaster mark the spot where Weneta sunk into the sea. Julin, which succeeded to its splendour, rejected Christianity. "Suddenly," says Von Müller, "lightning set fire to its wooden streets, and the whole city was consumed." Mecklenburg still bears the name derived from the "Mikli" or Slavic priests. Charlemagne prevailed upon the Obotrites to embrace Christianity, and defended them against the Saxon Wittikind, who was provoked by their compliance; but when the influence of the Carlovingian princes was withdrawn, the ancient super

Schaffarik's Geschichte. Andover Bibl. Repos.