The Let population, on the other hand, runs thus :

To these add certain members of the same stock in

East Prussia.

CHAPTER II.

The Slavonic Branch of the Sarmatian Stock.-The Russians.-Servians. -Lekh or Poles.-Tshek or Bohemians.-Bulgarians.—Panslavonism. -Original Slavonic Area.

THE Lithuanians are one of the two branches of the great Sarmatian stock. The Slavonians are the other.

The Slavonians fall into five divisions. I take the one which abuts upon Lithuania first. This is

1. The Russian or Moscovite.-In language, at least, it is closely connected with

2. The Servian.-The occupancy of the Servians Proper is, as we expect, Servia. But many other countries are, more or less, Servian. Bosnia, Turkish Croatia, and Herzegovna are Servian. Dalmatia is, in its essentials of blood and language, Servian. Carinthia, Carniola, and Croatia, the language of which is sometimes called Vend and sometimes Illyrian, are Servian. Montenegro is Servian. The Uskoks and Morlakians are closely akin to the Servians.

3. The Polish.-The Lekh, or Poles, are the Slavonians of the great central levels of Europe. Akin to them are the Serbs, or Vends, of Lusatia and the Circle of Kotbus, along with the now Germanized Linones of Luneberg, as well as the isolated Kassub of Rugenwalde in Pomerania.

4. The Tshek of Bohemia.—A German of the parts about Prague and Olmutz, a German of the country of

Huss and Ziska, is a Bohemian or a Moravian only as an Englishman is a Briton, or a Spaniard of the New World a Mexican, i. e. not at all. He is simply a German on Slavonic soil. The real indigena are the Tshek, for so they call themselves. Whether the term be native from the beginning is more than I can say. Word for word, it is Daci, of which we have the intermediate form Táno. The Tshek is the language of Bohemia and Moravia. Akin to it is the Slovak, of the southern part of the western Carpathians, in contact with the Magyar of Hungary.

5. The Bulgarians.-The language of Bulgaria is Slavonic. We may also add with safety, that its basis is something either Servian or Russian, or, if not this exactly, something between the two. The country

over which it is spoken belongs to the area where the two forms are supposed to have graduated into each other. Yet the Bulgarian is as little purely Servian as it is purely Russ. It has more than one Turk sound, more than one Turk combination. The Turk, like all the Siberian forms of speech, prefer an inflection. at the end, to one at the beginning of a word. The Bulgarian (in this respect standing alone amongst the Slavonic tongues) not only has a definite article, but incorporates it with the substantive to which it is attached, and, not only does this, but places it at the end of that word, rather than at the beginning. The Albanian does the same. So does the Rumanyo of Wallachia. So do the Norse languages. But no Slavonic tongue does so except the Bulgarian. Now the Bulgarian blood is pre-eminently mixed. It is Fin, Turk, and Sarmatian-certainly, more or less Slavonic; probably, more or less Lithuanic.

At an early period, the Scriptures were translated into Slavonic; from which it followed that the language into which they were rendered became written. Its alphabet

was founded on the Greek; inasmuch as the Christianity which it conveyed was the Christianity of Constantinople, i. e. that of the Greek Church. The missionary who introduced it bore the respected name of Cyrill, and the alphabet is known as the Cyrillian. It is one of the best and worst in Europe. It is good because it is full, and contains, for each simple single sound, a simple single sign. It is bad because it is founded upon the capital letters only; and, so being founded, is fitter for inscriptions than for writing. Nevertheless, it is the alphabet of the Russian portion of the Greek Church; and how large that portion is I need not say. It is an alphabet by means of which more than one language of Caucasus, Siberia, and even Armenia, has been reduced to writing.

What modern dialect represents this Old, or Church, Slavonic ? Some say the Russian, some the Servian, some the Bulgarian. It is certainly not the Bulgarian, and, probably, neither the Russ nor the Serb exactly. I believe it to be a dialect now extinct, but one which, originally, was spoken in some part of Hungary or Transylvania.

And now we may ask how these divisions and subdivisions of the Slavonic name are determined. Do they graduate into each other, or are they separated by broad and trenchant lines of demarcation? There are broad and trenchant lines of demarcation and there are the phenomena of transition.

The members of the southern division, the Servian and Russian (for the Russian, though at the present time spoken in both Siberia and America, originated in the parts about the Danube and the Carpathians), run into each other (the Russian being the most of an outlyer) but not into the members of the northern group, of which the Slovak is their nearest congener. Yet the Slovak affinities are

Tshek, Moravian, and Bohemian. The Serb of Lusatia is more Polish than Bohemian; not, however, without Bohemian elements. The isolated dialects of Luneburg and Pomerania are Polish. In one word, the affinities are just what the geographical relations suggest.

What applies to the language applies to the creed. The northern and southern divisions are natural, provided always that we consider the Russians as southern and Servian. At the same time, there are the phenomena of transition and intermixture.

The Germanized Slavonians of Luneburg, the Germanized Slavonians of Pomerania, the Poles, the Serbs of Lusatia, the Bohemians, the Moravians, and the Slovaks are either Romanists or Protestants; in other words, they took their Christianity from Rome rather than Greece. On the other hand, the Russians, the Bulgarians, and the Servians took their Christianity from Constantinople, and belong to the Greek, or Eastern, rather than to the Roman, or Western, Church.

In Illyria, by which I mean Croatia, Carinthia, and Carniola, there is (or rather there has been) an intermixture. The discovery of old writings in what is called the Glagolit alphabet has rewarded the industry and acumen of the investigators of the Illyrian, or Vend, dialects; the Glagolit alphabet being Greek in origin, and, as such, betraying a Constantinopolitan influence. It differs from the Cyrillian in detail only. Practically speaking, however, it is merely a literary curiosity. The Dalmatian, Carinthian, Carniolan, and Croatian dialects are written, when written at all, in Roman letters; the Cyrillian alphabet being Servian and Russian. The letters go with the churches.

One portion of the Slavonic stock is neither Protestant nor Romanist; neither Latin nor Greek. Bosnia, along