adjectives by derivative syllables or so-called suffixes, in which these languages develope the greatest richness in the formation of words. The richest in this respect are the Sanskrit, the Greek, and the German languages, and it is seldom that the termination agrees with the similar ones of another dialect, as some examples may show: from the root ag and ak (videre), the Sanskrit makes ak-sha (oculus), the Prussian ackis, the Greek OкKoç, the Latin oc-ulus; from dak the Sanskrit makes dakshana (dextra), the Greek dɛžɩa, the Old Prussian tickra.

The Prussian displays many of these endings, which resemble most nearly the Lithuanian and Lettish, and sometimes the German. It would occupy too much room to enumerate them all, and to compare them with similar suffixes in the Sanskrit. Lastly, the Prussian and Lithuanian language has in common with the cognates the power of forming compounds, and gives indeed examples of true Indian composition; for example, when the first member in the absolute state must be considered in the relation of a case, as but-sargs (paterfamilias); where, however, the true genitive appears, buttas-taws: in like manner from the particle sa (Sanskrit sa), and lub (amare, Sanskrit lubh, lubere), the compound saluban (matrimonium) is formed, and others, which sometimes appear to be formed after the German, as kaimalucke (heim-suchen). The construction has already accommodated itself to the genius of the German tongue, for the language early lost its determinate character; but how rich it even then was in sound, and how easily it accommodated itself to metre, the translation of the well-known verse will show: "Ein jeder lern' sein Lection," &c., which is thus given by Abel Will:

"Erains mukinsusin swaian mukinsnan
Tit wisst labhai stalliuns enstan buttan."

SECTION IV.-Conclusion.

The only conclusion that can be formed from a consideration of the facts surveyed in the two preceding sections is, that the Old Pruthenians or Prussians, the Lithuanians and

the Lettish people form a groupe of nations, distinct from the German or Gothic race on one side, and from the Slavi on the other, though more nearly related to these nations, and particularly to the latter, than to other branches of the IndoEuropean family. They appear to have been subject to an order of priests, more powerful than those of the other nations in the east of Europe, and only comparable to the Druidical hierarchy among the Celts. Their language differed considerably from the other eastern European dialects, and preserved the forms of the Sanskrit in a much purer and less altered state. It must be considered as a branch springing more immediately from the original stock. The inference is, that the people of the narrow extent of country included between the Finns and Goths were a distinct tribe, who preceded the Slavic race in their northern progress, and it is probable that they had occupied the coast of the Eastern Baltic many ages before the arrival of that people in the northern parts of Sarmatia. It is not improbable that they were the Venedi or Venedæ of the classical writers from the age of Pliny to that of Ptolemy.

CHAPTER IX.

OF THE ANCIENT AND MODERN INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTRIES SITUATED BETWEEN THE DANUBE AND

MOUNT TAURUS.

SECTION I.-General Survey.

THE Countries bordering on both sides of the Hellespont and Bosphorus have been connected from the earliest periods of history by social and political relations. On these opposite shores, to which the names of Europe and Asia perhaps first belonged, the same tribes of people appear to have been spread in every age. The intervening straits have been often passed, from either side, in warlike expeditions, undertaken on a smaller scale for objects of plunder, or on a greater for conquest and colonisation; and while the Asiatics were more civilised and powerful than the people of Europe, no formidable barrier seems to have opposed the progress of invaders till they reached the chain of Mount Hamus, defended by precipitous heights and by warlike and barbarous hordes. Even this boundary, as well as that of the Danube, is said to have been passed by various conquerors, either African or Asiatic, but no permanent impression was made on the countries further northward until a comparatively late period. Beyond the Danube were the vast plains of Scythia, called in later times Sarmatia, which were so little known in the days of Herodotus that the whole region was said by the Thracians to be inhabited by bees. The historian obtained information

that it belonged to the Sigynnæ, a nomadic people who were drawn over their plains by small horses in cars or wagons, and extended their journeys as far as the country of the Heneti, at the bottom of the Adriatic gulf. The ethnography of the region to the southward of the Danube is tolerably well known from the time of Herodotus. That writer has given us a general survey of the inhabitants, which has been illustrated by notices scattered through the works of other historians, and filled up with tolerable accuracy by Strabo, whose account of the tribes of Greeks and Thracians, and Epirots and Illyrians, is one of the most carefully written parts of his great work. From these sources we collect that four distinct races or groupes of nations, between whom it does not appear to have been supposed by the ancients that any affinity however remote existed, divided between them all the countries in Europe lately belonging to the Ottoman empire. Of these the Thracians were the most numerous and extensive. They occupied all the eastern parts of the European region above described, as well as the central plains to the southward of the Danube, and in Asia Minor a still more extensive tract. To the westward of the Thracians, and reaching from thence to the Adriatic, were Illyrian tribes, a nation of barbarous mountaineers. To the southward of the Illyrians were the Epirotic tribes, who possessed a tract of hill-country reaching from the Ionian Sea to Macedonia, and cutting off the western parts of Greece from the Illyrian territory. The fourth nation are the Greeks, who were hemmed in towards the north by the Epirots on the western, and by the Thracians on the eastern side. Of these four nations the Greeks alone can be said to have left undoubted posterity, preserving still the language and perpetuating the stock of their forefathers. There are, however, other races in the same countries who in all probability have succeeded in like manner to the Thracians and Illyrians, though the evidence of their descent is not so unequivocal, since they are not without some research distinguishable from the various colonies who have passed the Danube and settled themselves to the southward of that river in later times, after partially dispossessing the earlier inhabitants. The earliest of these invading nations came from the

westward. They were the Celtic Scordisci, who, as we have seen, occupied an extensive country to the southward of the Danube. They are placed by Strabo between the Margus or the Morawa, and the Noarus,* supposed to be the Save, namely, in the modern Servia and Bosnia. They are said to have destroyed the Triballi, who had been one of the most powerful Thracian tribes in the time of Herodotus, and they maintained their independence till they were conquered by the Romans. In the accounts given of the wars of the Roman armies the Scordisci are reckoned among the principal nations of Thrace. From this time no important accession was made to the population of the countries beyond the Danube till the age of Valens, when Moesia was given by the emperor to the Goths, who passed the river in a body, which Gibbon computes to have amounted to a million of people. But the Goths abandoned Moesia, which became afterwards the seat of the Bulgarian kingdom, while many extensive districts in the northern part of the Byzantine empire were colonised, as we have seen, by various Slavonian hordes. The Bulgarians were, in the ninth century, the dominant people in these countries. They were, as we shall hereafter observe, a Turkish race, and took their name from the Wolga, termed by them Bolga, on which was situated their ancient kingdom of Bolgari; but they appear to have been outnumbered by the Slavic hordes under their sway, and to have adopted the language of that people, with whom they were intermixed.¶ Nations of the Slavic language were the last people who obtained settlements for numerous hordes beyond the Danube, until the invasion of the Byzantine empire by the Turks; and those tribes in the Ottoman provinces who speak neither the Slavonian nor the Turkish language, may be considered as most

* Strabo, lib. vii. p. 318. Gibbon, ch. xxvi.

+ T. Liv. Epit. lib. lxv.
§ Mithridat. ii. s. 641.

|| Von Engel, cited by Adelung. See also Müller's Ugrische Volkstamm, Theil ii.

¶ Boscovich, who was a native of Ragusa in Dalmatia found himself able to understand the Bulgarians, during his travels through their country, without great difficulty. See Boscovich's Travels, Lausanne, 1772, p. 59. The speech of the Bulgarians is intelligible to the Russians, and their church books are in the Servian or Russian language. See Adelung, Mithridates, ii. 642.