between 980 and 1015, introduced the Christian religion, according to the doctrines of the Greek church, founded monasteries, and laid thus the earliest foundations of literary and ecclesiastical culture. Kiew remained the metropolis of the empire; and although the seat of government was removed to Susdal, and afterwards, in 457, to Vladimir, yet Kiew continued to be the centre of whatever learning existed in the country. About 1236 the southern part of the Russian state fell under the dominion of the Mongolian Tartars, and the Poles gained possession of nearly the whole empire, which they held till Ivan Vasilievitsch restored its independence in the last half of the fifteenth century, and laid the foundation of its subsequent greatness.

Paragraph 2.-Russian dialects.*

There are three dialects of the Russian language, which may serve to distinguish three subdivisions of the race.

1. The pure or proper Russian, the cultivated language of the whole Russian nation, spoken in Moscow and all the central parts of the European empire of Russia. Vulgar and corrupted branches of this dialect are those of Susdal and Olonetz, the last of which is intermixed with Finnish words.

2. The Malo-Russian, the language of the south-eastern parts of European Russia, approaching to the old Slavic in many forms of expression and in the enumeration of some consonants. This dialect is perhaps richer than any other in national songs, many of which have a peculiar beauty.

The Malo-Russian is essentially the same idiom as that of the Russniaks or Ruthenians, inhabitants of the eastern part of Galicia and the north-eastern districts of Hungary and Poland, who are about three millions of people. They belong to the Greek church, although beyond the limits of the Russian empire.

3. The White Russian is the dialect spoken in Lithuania and in part of White Russia, especially in Volhynia. The historical documents of Lithuania were written in this dialect, which was in use as a written language in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

* Schaffarik.-Bibl. Repos, ubi supra.

Paragraph 3.-Of the southern branches of the Eastern Slavic stem Servians, Croats, and Winds.

:

Besides the Russians and the various tribes of the Western Slavonian race spread through the north of Europe, who will be mentioned in the sequel, there are several nations belonging to the same family who inhabit the south-eastern part of the continent, or the countries between the Adriatic and the Euxine. The latter are partly subject to the Austrian and partly to the Ottoman empire. They may be divided into three classes, which are termed severally the Servians, the Croats, and the Winds, or Southern Wends. The tribes included in each of these classes are distinguished from those which belong to the other departments by their peculiar dialects, and by other characteristic differences. To the Servian branch, according to the evidence afforded by their idioms, belong the Servians properly so termed, inhabiting the province of Servia, the Bosnians, the Bulgarians, the Uskoks, the Morlachians, the Slavonian people of Wallachia, the people of Eastern or Servian Dalmatia, including the republic of Ragusa, and the Servians scattered through Hungary and Siebenburg. The second, or Croat branch, includes not only the people of Croatia proper, but some Croat tribes inhabiting districts in Hungary, Dalmatia, and Carniola. The Winds, or Southern Wends, who constitute a third branch belonging to this southern division of the Slavonian race, are distinguished likewise by peculiarities of dialects, and by the inveterate hatred which these people and the Croats everywhere bear to each other. The Winds are inhabitants of several provinces in the Austrian dominions, further to the north-west than the former tribes, as Carniola, Carinthia, and Stiria.

These tribes are allied by their dialects to the Russians, much more nearly than to the Poles, or the western Slavonian nations. They are on this ground referred by Dobrowsky and Schaffarik to the great eastern division of the Slavic race, anciently termed Antes. The proximity of idiom is such between the Servians and the Russians, that the former people, having embraced Christianity about a century before the latter, and having in use the Slavonian alphabet and liturgy framed

for them by Cyril and Methodius, these were adopted by the Russians on their conversion, and even continue to be used at the present day in the churches of Russia, having undergone but slight alterations. By Nestor, the old ecclesiastical Russian dialect is termed Servian; and both the Russians and the Servians long made use of the same Bible and other religious books, and they understand each other in conversation better than the individuals of any other two Slavonian tribes.

Respecting the history of the southern Slavonic tribes different opinions have been maintained; but this has not arisen from the want of data on which a tolerably certain conclusion might be established. Some writers have imagined that the Slavonian nations in the countries between the Adriatic and the Euxine, were the primitive inhabitants of that region. "Dolci, a native of Dalmatia, identified the Slavonians with the old Illyrians; and Katansich supposed the dialect of the Croats to be the old Pannonian language, on no other grounds than some forced etymologies of ancient Illyrian names from the Slavonic." The Veneti, on the Adriatic gulf, have been imagined from their name to have been Wends or Slavonians; and the Ragusan Count Sorgo even attempted to trace the names of the Greek and Roman gods from the same language. All these conjectures are founded, according to Dobrowsky, on ignorance of the historical fact, that the Slavonian tribes now inhabiting the country near the Danube and the Adriatic, first came into this region in the sixth century of our era.*

The emigration of the Servians is recorded in an obscure passage of the Emperor Constantine, in his work "De Administrando Imperio," which has been cited and illustrated by Adelung. It is nearly as follows:

"It must be understood that the Servians (meaning the Servians of Dalmatia and Illyricum) are descended from the Pagan Servii, also called White Servians, who inhabit the further parts of Turcia, that is, Hungary, on which Francia (viz. the empire of the Franks, at that time including Bohemia,) borders, as likewise does Great Chrobatia or Croatia,

*Dobrowsky, Geschichte der Böhmischer Sprache und ältern Literatur. Prag.

1808.

still pagan, which is also called White Chrobatia. In that country therefore was the original abode of these Servians."

The White Servia, or rather the Great Servia, whence the Servians to the southward of the Danube are here said to have migrated, is shown by Adelung to have been Little or Red Russia, on the Upper Vistula, and the modern East Gallicia. The Magna Chrobatia, whence the Croats proceeded, was also to the northward of Hungary, near the Carpathian chain. The movements of the Slavonian tribes towards the south appear to have been gradual, and as circumstances opened to them a way. Pannonia or Hungary was left vacant in the sixth century, in consequence of the migration of the Langobards into Italy. It fell into the possession of the Avars; and on this occasion, Slavonic tribes, who were their allies or vassals, were settled in Carinthia and Carniola in the year 668.* Already, in the age of Procopius, the northern bank of the Danube was in the possession of Slavonians of the race of Antes. These barbarians, in their annual expeditions into the provinces subject to Justinian, wasted the country of its former inhabitants, and the wilderness was peopled by hordes of their own kindred. In the first half of the seventh century, under the Emperor Heraclius, Slavonian tribes gained possession of Servia and Dalmatia. About the same time, several clans arrived in Bulgaria, to whom the Bulgarians, as conquerors of the country, assigned lands in 679. The colonies of this people extended from the Euxine to the Adriatic. The Croats became a powerful nation, and were ruled by sovereigns of their own: they had possession of nearly all the eastern coast of the Adriatic, and exercised piracy for many years in that sea and in the Mediterranean.

I shall add some few particulars respecting these branches individually.

A. Of the Servian branch.

The Servian language is spoken by about five millions of people. It extends, with some variation of dialect, over the Turkish and Austrian provinces of Servia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Monte Negro, and Dalmatia, over Slavonia and the eastern part of Croatia. Of these provinces, Dalmatia belongs to

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.t 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.