in the eastern part of Europe, or in Sarmatia, from some of whom the Slavonian tribes have been supposed, perhaps with good reason, to be descended. The Venedæ, in the northern tracts near the coast of the Baltic, are by many writers regarded as the ancestors of the Slavonian race; others deduce that people from the ancient Sarmatæ. We shall take some notice of the arguments by which these opinions are defended after surveying the history of this family of nations from the period when they become clearly known and identified.

Jornandes distinguishes the whole Slavonian race by the collective term of Winidæ, a slight modification of the name of Wends, which is applied to all the nations of this family by their German neighbours. After describing Dacia, now Hungary, surrounded by lofty Alps, namely, the Carpathian chain, he adds, that on the left side of these mountains towards the north, and from the source of the river Vistula, an immense region lies, which is inhabited by the populous nation of the Winida. Different tribes of this race had, he says, particular epithets, but the names by which they were generally distinguished were those of Slavini and Antes. They were all subject to the Goths in the time of their great emperor Hermanrich, who was a contemporary of Julian. The Slavini were the western division: they occupied all the country between the Danube and the river Dniester or Tyras, and extended towards the north as far as the Vistula, termed by Jornandes the Viscla. To the eastward of the Sclavini and of the Dniester were the Antes, who reached down as far as the coast of the Euxine, and from the Tyras to the Dnieper or Borysthenes.*

In another passage of his work, containing a brief account of the war in which king Hermanrich subdued the Wends, Jornandes makes three divisions of that people, which he terms Veneti, Antes, and Sclavi. Veneti is probably only a more latinised form of Winidæ. He says expressly that all these three races were of one origin: " Post Herulorum cædem idem Hermanricus in Venetos arma commovit, qui, quamvis armis dispertiti, sed numerositate pollentes, primo resistere conabantur. Hi, ut ab initio expositionis, vel catalogo gentis dicere

* Jornandes de Rebus Geticis, apud Grotium.

cœpimus, ab una stirpe exorti, tria nunc nomina reddidere: id est Veneti, Antes, Sclavi: qui, quamvis nunc ita facientibus peccatis nostris ubique desæviant, tamen tunc omnes Hermanrici imperio serviere."

Procopius describes the same race under a parallel division: he terms the principal tribes Antæ and Sclaveni-Ekλa¤ñvai— but calls them collectively by a name not elsewhere found, namely, Spori.* "These nations," he says, "the Sclaveni and the Antæ, are not ruled by one chief, but live as of old, under a popular government, and therefore their proceedings, both in prosperity and adversity, are referred to public consultations. All common affairs, from ancient usage, are conducted in a similar manner among these barbarous tribes....They dwell in miserable cabins erected at considerable distances from each other, and not unfrequently change the places of their abode. When they go to war, most of them march against their enemies with little bucklers and darts in their hands, and without breastplates. Some of them have not even a coat or cloak, and wear no covering but greaves about their thighs, and in this state come to battle with their adversaries. Both tribes have the same language, which is extremely barbarous. Nor do they differ in any respect from each other in person: they are all of remarkably good stature and powerful. Their complexions and hair are neither white nor yellow, nor entirely inclined to black, but all of them are somewhat red-haired. They also live, like the Massagetæ, in a hardy manner, neglectful of comfort, and like them are always covered with a squalid filthiness. They are by no means cruel or malicious, but resemble the Hunns in their simple habits. In ancient times one name was given both to the Antæ and the Sclaveni: they were formerly called in common Spori, as I suppose, because they were scattered over the country in cabins separated from each other; owing to this circumstance they extend themselves over a wide tract of land: most of the territories on the Danube are in their possession.”†

* Spori is probably an erroneous orthograpy of Sorbi, a name common to several tribes of the Slavonian family.

It is worth while to advert to the description given by Gibbon, chiefly from this passage of Procopius: "Four thousand six hundred villages," he says,

Procopius describes the Sclaveni and the Antæ as inhabiting the northern side of the Danube, whence they made frequent incursions into the provinces on the right bank of that river, frequently plundering in their expeditions some of the most populous and fertile countries of the Byzantine empire.

It appears from this account that the Slavi possessed in the time of Jornandes, that is, after the complete emigration of the Goths from their settlements on the Danube and to the northward of the Euxine, a great part of the countries which had been subdued by that people, and afterwards by the Hunns. From the Danube they reached northward across the Krapak or Carpathian chain into Poland and Russia. In the age of Jornandes there were no Slavic tribes on the Adriatic, or in the countries situated to the southward of the Danube, which they occupied, as we shall find, at a somewhat later period.

Modern writers recognise the division of the whole Slavic race into two great branches, corresponding with those which are denominated in the above extracts Antes and Slavini. The former is the eastern branch, the latter comprehends the western tribes of this family. The correctness of this division was perceived and exemplified by the learned Bohemian abbot Dobrowsky, one of the most profound investigators of the Slavic history and literature and antiquities, whose views have been adopted with little variation by succeeding writers.*

"were scattered over the provinces of Russia and Poland; and the huts of the barbarians were hastily built of rough timber, in a country deficient both in stone and iron. Erected, or rather concealed, in the depths of forests, on the banks of rivers, on the edge of morasses, we may not perhaps without flattery compare them to the architecture of the beaver, which they resembled in a double issue, to the land and water, for the escape of the savage inhabitants, an animal less cleanly, less diligent, and less social than that marvellous quadruped. The fertility of the soil, rather than the labour of the natives, supplied the rustic plenty of the Sclavonians." The document whence Gibbon obtained the supposed number of Slavonian villages is a particular list in a curious MS. of the year 550, found in the library of Milan, which exercised the patience of the Count de Buet. Karamsin has examined this list, and he avers that it contains many names which are not Slavonian. He deems it unworthy of credit.

* Dobrowsky is followed by Adelung in the account of the Slavonic nations given in the second volume of the Mithridates, as likewise by Schaffarik, author of a learned work entitled "Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur," published at Buda in 1826, and by the anonymous writer of an excellent memoir on

Dobrowsky enumerates the dialects spoken by all the various nations of the Slavonian race, as follows. To the eastern division, as he says, belong, first, the Russian and its dialects; second, the old Slavonian, the ecclesiastical or literary dialect of this language; third, the modern Slavonic or Illyrian dialect, spoken in Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, and Dalmatia ; fourth, the Croatian; fifth, the Windish, spoken by the people termed Winds, in Carinthia, Carniola, Stiria or Steyermark, together with the variety of the Windish spoken in the county of Eisenberg. To the western branch of Slavonian dialects belong, first, the Slovakian; second, the Bohemian language; third and fourth, the Wendish, in Upper and Lower Lusatia ; fifth, the Polish, with the Silesian variety of that language.

Dobrowsky distinguishes the dialects belonging to these two classes of Slavonic idioms by certain particles, the use of which is common to a whole class, and unknown to the forms of speech which belong to the other class. I need not specify these, but shall merely remark that the dialects of the Slavonian language, though numerous and clearly marked, and even constituting groupes severally distinguishable, are yet by no means so remote from each other as are many idioms which are universally regarded as dialects of one language.

SECTION II.-Of the Eastern Slavic Nations or Antes.

First branch.-Paragraph 1.-Of the Russians.

The Russians or Moscovites are one of the nations descended from that branch of the Slavonic race which is termed by Jornandes Antes, and by Dobrowsky, the eastern division of the Slavi. The Russians, as it is well known, are by far the most numerous and extensively spread, and they occupy the regions furthest to the East of all the nations belonging to this stock.* The first notices discovered of the Antes are in the the same subject in the American Biblical Repository, published at Andover, U. S., 1834.

* The Wjætitsches or Vyætitsches, a Slavonian branch on the upper territory of the Oka, were, according to Nestor, the most eastern tribe of the whole Slavic race in the ninth century. (Nestor, Aelteste Jahrbücher, &c. Scherer. Müller's Ugr. Volkst. ii. 247.)

Gothic history of Jornandes, who mentions the conquest of that division of the Slaves by Vinitar, the successor of Hermanrich, king of the Goths. Vinitar was at that time tributary to the Hunns. He subdued the Antes, who then inhabited the country lying to the northward of the Euxine. This tribe was afterwards liberated from the Gothic yoke by the assistance of the Hunns. The following is a brief sketch of the subsequent history of the Russians as deduced by Adelung, chiefly from Von Schloezer's edition of Nestor's annals.

The Russian people consisted in ancient times of many independent tribes, who were spread over the regions extending northward from the mouths of the Danube. At an early period two principal states arose among the Russians, the northern one near lake Ilmen, and the southern on the Dnieper, of which Kiew was the capital. The former consisted of the principal and most numerous tribes, and the latter of the Little Russians, or the western tribes, who, from the level plains which they inhabited, were named Poljanen. The northern Russians founded the state of Nowgorod, on which occasion they became intermixed with people of Finnish race. Internal quarrels brought the Slavi of Nowgorod, the Tschudes, and the Krivitsches near Polocz, about 862, under the dominion of Rurik and his Warjæga Rossi, a Scandinavian tribe to whom this denomination was given by the Finns. Rurik gave to his new subjects the first laws, and the principles of civilisation as far as they were capable of receiving them at that time, and from this period the inhabitants of the state of Nowgorod were termed Russians. Hence we are enabled to explain the fact, that some Greek writers, and even Nestor, distinguished the Russians from the Slavi, and the Russian from the Slavonian language. The real Russians were Swedes, and their idiom the Swedish language, which, however, as belonging to the least numerous party, soon gave way to the Slavonian, and was swallowed up in it.* Rurik's first successor Oleg conquered Kiew in 884, and united both states: thence the name of Russians was extended over the Southern Slavi, in the country afterwards called the Ukraine. Vladimir,

* Even Rurik's grandsons had Slavonian names, as Sviatoslav, Jaroslav, &c. (See Andover Bibl. Repository, ubi supra, p. 362.)