ants of the Turkish Sandshak Banialouka, it contains about 730,000 souls. Of these 174,000 belong to the Greek church; the others are Catholics.

IV. Vindish Branch, or Slovenzi.

This comprises the Slavic inhabitants of the duchy of Styria, of the kingdom of Illyria, (the two Austrian duchies, Carinthia and Carniola), and of the banks of the rivers Muhr and Raab in Hungary. With the exception of a few Protestants they are all Catholics, about 800,000, in number. They call themselves Slovenzi, but are known by foreign writers under the name of Vindes.

B. WESTERN STEM.

I. Bohemian Branch.

1. BOHEMIANS (Tchekes). 2. MORAVIANS. These are the Slavic inhabitants of the kingdom of Bohemia and Margravate of Moravia, both belonging to the Austrian empire. They amount to about 3,700,000; of whom 100,000 are Protestants, the rest Catholics.

II. Slovakish Branch.

Almost all the northern part of Hungary is inhabited by Slovaks; besides this, they are scattered through the whole of that country, and speak different dialects. They are 1,800,000 in number; two thirds Catholics and one third Protestants.

III. Polish Branch.

Inhabitants of the old kingdom of Poland, of the provinces called since 1772 the Russian-Polish, of the duchy of Posen, of the Austrian kingdom of Galicia, and the republic of Cracow. Further, the Slavic part of the population of Silesia. They amount to ten millions, all Catholics, excepting half a million of Protestants.

IV. Sorabian-Vendish Branch.

Remnants of the old Sorabae and several other Slavic races, in Lusatia, and some parts of Brandenburg. About 200,000, Protestants and Catholics.

There is no doubt, that besides the races here enumerated, there are Slavic tribes scattered through Germany, Transylvania, Moldavia and Walachia, nay, through the whole of Turkey; as for instance the Tchaconic dialect, spoken in the eastern part of ancient Sparta and unintelligible to the other Greeks, has been proved by one of the most distinguished philologists to have been of Slavic origin. But to ascertain their number, at any rate very small, would be a matter of impossibility, and in every respect of little consequence.

As we distinguish among the nations of the Slavic race two great families, the connexion of whose members among each other is entirely independent of their present geographical situation, we find also in the Slavic language the same marked distinction. To specify the marks, by which the etymologian recognizes to which of these families each nation belongs, seems to be here out of place. The reader, without knowing the language itself, would hardly be able to comprehend them sufficiently; and he who understands it, will find better sources of information in philological works. All that concerns us here, is the general character, the genius of the language. For this purpose we will try to give in a few words a general outline of its grammar, exhibiting principally those features, which, as being common to all or most of its different dialects, seem to be the best adapted to express its general character.

The analogy between the Slavic and the Sanscrit languages consists indeed only in the similar sound of a great many words; the construction of the former is purely European, and it has in this respect a nearer relation to the Greek, Latin and German; with which idioms it has evidently been derived from the same source. The Slavic has three genders. Like the Latin, it

8 By Kopitar; see the Wiener Jahrbücher, 1822, Vol. XVII. Kastanica, Sitina, Gorica, and Prasto, are Slavic names. There is even a place called Exhaßozwoi, Slavic village. Leake in his Researches observes that Slavic names of places occur throughout all Greece.

9 The affinity of the Slavic and Greek languages it has recently been attempted to prove in several works. Dankovsky in his work, Die Griechen als Sprachverwandte der Slaven, Presburg 1828, contends that a knowledge of the Slavic language is of the highest importance for the Greek scholar, as the only means by which he may be enabled to clear up obscure passages and to ascertain the signification of doubtful words. Among the historical proofs, he furnishes a vocabulary containing 306 Slavic and Greek words of striking anal

knows no article; at least not the genuine Slavic; for those dialects which have lost their national character, like the Bulgarian, or those which have been corrupted by the influence of the German,10 employ the demonstrative pronoun as an article; and the Bulgarian has borrowed the Albanian mode of suffixing one to the noun. For this very reason the declensions are more perfect in Slavic than in German and Greek; for the different cases, as in Latin, are distinguished by suffixed syllables or endings. The singular has seven cases; the plural only six, the vocative having always the form of the nominative. As for the dual, a form however which the Slavic languages do not all possess, the nominative and accusative, the genitive and local, the dative and instrumental cases, are always alike.

For the declensions of adjectives the Slavic has two principal forms, according as they are definite or indefinite. The Old or Church Slavonic knows only two degrees of comparison, the positive and comparative; it has no superlative, or rather it has the same form for the comparative and superlative. This is regularly made by the suffix ii, mostly united with one of those numerous sibilants, for which the English language has hardly letters or signs, sh, tsh, scht, etc. In the more modern dialects

ogy. "Of three sisters," he observes, " one kept faithful to her mother tongue-the Slavic language; the second gave to that common heritage the highest cultivation—the Greek language; and the third mixed the mother tongue with a foreign idiom-the Latin language." A work of the same tendency has been published in the Greek Language, by the Greek priest Constantine, Vienna 1828. It contains a vocabulary of 800 pages of Russian and Greek words, corresponding in sound and meaning. That these views are not new, is generally known; although they hardly ever have been carried so far, except perhaps by the author of the History of Russia, Levesque, who considers the Latins as a Slavic colony; or by Solarich, who derived all modern languages from the Slavic. Gelenius in his Lexicon Symphonum, 1557, made the first etymological attempt in respect to the Slavic languages. In modern times, great attention has been paid to Slavic etymology by Dobrovsky, Linde, Adelung, Bantkje, Fritsch, and others. An Etymologicon Universale was published in 1811, at Cambridge in England, by W. Whiter.-Galiffe, in his Italy and its inhabitants, 1816 and 1817, started the opinion, that the Russian was the original language, and that the Old Slavonic and all the rest were only dialects.

10 Or rather some writers in Lusatia and the Austrian provinces comprised in the kingdom of Illyria.

this deficiency has been supplied; in most of them a superlative form is made by prefixing the particle naï; e. g. in Servian, mudar, wise, mudrii, wiser, naïmudrii, the wisest. The Russian, besides this and several other superlative forms, has one, that is more perfect, as proceeding from the adjective itself: doroghii, dear, doroshe, dearer, doroshaïshii, dearest. Equally rich is this language in augmentative and diminutive forms not only of the substantive but also of the adjective, a perfection in which even the Italian can hardly be compared to it; of which however all the Slavic dialects possess more or less. Almost all the Russian substantives have two augmentatives and three diminutives; some have even more. We abstain with some difficulty from adducing examples; but we are afraid of going beyond our limits. It deserves to be mentioned as a peculiarity, that the Slavi consider only the first four ordinal numbers as adjectives, and all the following ones as substantives. For this reason, the governed word must stand in the genitive, instead of the accusative: osm sot (nom. sto), eight hundred. In all negative phrases they employ likewise the genitive instead of the accusative. A double negation occurs in Slavic frequently, without indicating an affirmation; for even if another negation has already taken place, they are accustomed to prefix to the verb the negative particle ne or nje.

In respect to the verb, it is difficult to give a general idea of its character; for it is in the forms of this part of speech, that there reigns the greatest variety in the numerous dialects of the Slavic language. The same termination which in Old Slavonic and in Russian indicates invariably the first person of the present, u or gu, is in Servian that of the third person plural of the present and imperfect; and the general termination of the Servian and the Polish for the first person of the present, am, em or im, is in Old Slavonic and Russian used for the plural, em and im. There is however one fundamental form through all the Slavic dialects for the second person of the present, a termination in ash, esh or ish; and this is consequently the person, by which it is to be recognized to what conjugation a verb belongs. The division of the verbs adopted in all other European languages into Active and Passive, seems to be useless in Slavic; for their being active or passive has no influence upon their flexion; and the forms of the Latin Passive and Deponent must in Slavic be expressed by a circumlocution. A division of more

importance and springing from the peculiarity of the language itself, is that into verbs Perfect and Imperfect. Neither the Greek, nor the Latin, nor the German, nor any of the languages descending from them, admits of a similar distinction. It seems therefore difficult for persons not perfectly acquainted with any Slavic dialect, to form to themselves a clear idea of it. It is however one of their most striking features, which adds very considerably to their general richness and power. The relation in which the perfect and imperfect verbs stand to each other, is about the same as that of the perfect and imperfect tenses in the conjugation of the Latin verb. Perfect verbs express that an action takes place a single time, and therefore is entirely completed and past; from their very nature it results, that they have no imperfect tense, and their conjugation must be in general incomplete. Imperfect verbs express that the same action continues. Both have in most cases the same radical syllable, and may be formed with a certain degree of freedom; thus in Servian, viknuti, to cry once, vikati, to be crying; umriyeti, to die, umirati, to be dying. There are however others, which stand in the same relation to each other without issuing from the same verbal stock; e. g. in Servian, tchuti and slushati, to hear; retji and govoriti, to speak, etc.

The Polish language, which is remarkably rich in every kind of flexion, has a still simpler and more regular way of forming also a frequentative out of almost every verb; e. g. czytam, I read, czytivam, I read often; biore, I take, bieram, I take often, etc. In Bohemian, in respect to grammar by far the most cultivated of the Slavic languages, there is a refinement in the tenses, of which even the most perfect knowledge of the classical languages gives hardly any idea, and the right use of which is seldom, if ever, acquired by foreigners. Duration, decision, repetition, all the different shades of time and purpose, which other languages have to circumscribe in long phrases, the Bohemian expresses by a slight alteration of one or two syllables.

Not less rich in these variations of the verb is the Russian. Besides a vast treasure of original, genuine indefinite verbs, as they call all those, which have the general character of the verb of other languages, without any allusion to the duration or continuance of the action, they have verbs simple, frequentative, and perfect. A single example will illustrate the fact: