ART. II.-THE SLAVIC RACES. THERE is in the life-time of every race of people a prehistoric period, where the ethnologist, in tracing the stream of national life upward toward its source, finds all records merging into heroic song and ancestral tradition, until finally the gray mists of antiquity settle down upon him, defying further investigation, and concealing from his view the primal origin of the race. Among the great nations which have held and still hold a prominent place in the history of the world, there are few whose rise and progress present more difficulty to the student of history than the Slavic race. The silence of historians just where their testimony is most needed, and the conflict of testimony, and even self-contradictions, found in much of the information given by historians in connection with this subject, are truly remarkable. We might take up the half of this article in merely collating the direct contradictions and the frequently amusing blunders found in the writings of those historians who are almost our sole authorities as chroniclers of their times. The causes of this obscurity and conflict of testimony may be briefly assigned as the following: 1. The Slavic ancestors left their history to be written by others. No Slavic writer earlier than the middle of the eleventh century ever attempted, so far as we know, to hand down to posterity a record of the doings of his race. Their history has therefore been left to be written, according to the ignorance or prejudice of the times, by writers who were their enemies or rivals. Following the peaceful pursuits of agriculture rather than war, they were often passed by in silent contempt by those who considered conquest the highest glory of man. They wielded the implements of husbandry, and when stern necessity compelled, or when fierce cruelty and oppressive tyranny roused them to desperate conflict, the battle-ax and the bow, better than the pen. They performed deeds of prowess and valor, but either did not know, or with barbaric haughtiness disdained, the noble art by which the story of their valor might be told to remote ages. The silence of history in any nation by no means proves the absence of those heroic traits which are the favorite themes of the historian. Many a vaunted achievement which by the skill of the eulogist has become a household word in modern times, if stripped of its poetic dress and divested of its mythological exaggerations would sink into a mere commonplace occurrence; and many a noble deed and generous act, through lack of a historian, has perished from the memory of man. 2. The territories occupied by the early Slavic people were but little known to the inhabitants of that Empire which called itself the world, the most of whom cared very little about the barbarians who dwelt in the regions beyond. This is not to be wondered at when we think of the great difficulties of intercommunication in those early days, and the extremely limited facilities of the early geographers for obtaining correct information concerning distant localities. In this way identical names have been given to widely different territories, and provinces made to overlap one another, like some of the old land-warrants, in some of our States, in a manner quite puzzling to the modern reader. As an illustration let any one attempt to trace out the Argonautic expedition, and he will find plenty of work to arrange a clear chart. 3. Much of the confusion in the historical records arises through the metamorphosis of names. Proper names, when transferred into a foreign language and expressed by an inadequate alphabet, become frequently so disguised as to defy recognition. With repeated transfers the difficulty is doubled and quadrupled, until the most skillful etymologists are baffled in their attempts to trace the original word. In Turkey at the the present day many striking illustrations are seen of these changes. The European reader of a Turkish newspaper is frequently puzzled to make out familiar European names in their Turkish dress; and in Turkish passports the name is sometimes given so strangely as to make the traveler almost doubt his own identity. There are also many such examples in modern Greek. The names Bright, Butler, Whitworth, Bismarck,* etc., have a strange look in Greek characters. We cannot wonder, then, that Slavic names, some of which at the present day appear so utterly unpronounceable expressed in Roman * Μπραϊτ, Μπουτλερ, Ουϊτουορθ, Μπίζμαρκ. characters, should have assumed, under the pen of writers ignorant of the Slavic language, such strange forms as in many instances to conceal their Slavic origin. But still greater difficulties have arisen from the custom prevalent among many writers of translating foreign names into their real or fancied equivalents. Now take two such languages as the Latin and Greek, and then at least three distinct so-called barbarian tongues, namely, the Gothic, (embracing the Teutonic,) the Slavic, (embracing the Lithuanian,) and the Tartar, (including the languages of the Chuses, the Magyars, and the Turks;) put these five distinct and antagonistic languages into one region of country, and, after the clashing conflicts, the expulsions, incursions, and migrations of centuries, we cannot wonder so much at the confused state of historic records and ancestral traditions, and the consequent difficulty and frequent impossibility of tracing out with perfect certainty the names of persons, places, and tribes. In modern times considerable has been written by European scholars upon the large Slavic element of the European population; and within the past twenty years the various political schemes which, under the general but vague term of Panslavism, have been proposed for the unification or confederation of the Slavic races, have attracted new attention to the subject and awakened new investigation. Still, with all that has been said and written by Slavic and non-Slavic authors, the questions, Who were the ancient Slavi? where their original home? what their characteristics? whence their name? and who of the present existing nations may be regarded as their descendants and members of the great Slavic family? are much more easily asked than conclusively answered. Το collate a few of the leading facts bearing upon a solution of these questions, and more particularly such as are not generally accessible to the English student, is the main object of the present sketch, which is intended as introductory to one. which it is hoped will present more fully before the readers of the Quarterly the Bulgarian people and some of the interesting ecclesiastical events which have taken place among them.* *For information concerning Slavic races and literature see a very able and extensive article in Biblical Repository for April, 1834, drawn chiefly from Schaffarik's Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur. See also work by same 1. Who were the ancient Slavi?-In determining the place of any people among the nations of the earth the characteristic marks or traces which are followed may be regarded as of three kinds, namely: first, historical, examining the records of what they have said about themselves as well as what others have said about them; second, archæological, examining coins, medals, inscriptions, ruins, etc., as well as names of places, rivers, and mountains; third, philological, tracing affinities of language, and similarities of construction and forms of expression. Schaffarik, the learned author of the celebrated work on Slavic ethnography, divides the whole human race into four families, and calls them by the names Indo-European, Semitic, Northern, and Chinese. The first of these has exceeded all the others in intellectual vigor and social development, and is the one which concerns us particularly in this investigation. By a comparison of languages, commencing with the Sanscrit, the sacred language of India, there are found in the Indian, Persian, Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, and Slavic certain affinities, certain common radicals, and many common features of structure and forms of expression. This has led to their classification in one family, called formerly Indo-Germanic, and still later by some Aryan, but generally called the Indo-European. According to the testimony of such authorities as Humboldt, Rask, Klaproth, Schaffarik, Max Müller, and Prof. Whitney, belonging to this great Indo-European family, which numbers according to Klaproth's estimate over three hundred millions of the human race, we find the Slavic races, which now compose probably ninety millions of that number. We thus bring the Slavic race into the same family with Greeks, Latins, Germans, and Celts; in a word, into the same branch of the human family with ourselves. Where the original home of the great Indo-European branch of the human family was can be only conjectured, but the prevailing opinion is in favor of India. At some remote period of time, perhaps three thousand years before the Christian era, (Klaproth assigns the date 3076 B. C.,) these different nations must have been of one author: Slavic Races, Talvi, (Mrs. Robinson,) New York; Henderson's Biblical Researches in Russia; Winer, Jahrbücher der Literatur, vol. xvii; Foreign Quarterly Review, vol. vii; Schaffarik's Slavische Alterthümer, 2 vols.; Dobroffsky's Institutiones Linguæ Slavica; Dobroffsky's Slavonka. tongue and one speech, and in subsequent and different periods, pressed and crowded out in the struggle for life, or impelled by a desire for conquest, they have migrated and spread westward and northward. Thus have been separated the Indian race, the Areitan, Median, and Sarmatian branches, the Afghans, Persians, and Armenians; the Thracian stock, with its Greek and Latin branches, the Celto-Germanic, or Teutonic, (of Germanic and Celtic,) and Slavic, with Slavic and Lithuanian branches. Such is the position of the Slavic races, according to the philological classification. When we endeavor to trace them historically we find it a more difficult task. Modern writers who treat of the subject may be divided into two classes, of which the one regard the Slavi as a new people in Europe, entering only in the fourth or fifth century-a mixed race of Huns, Avares, and other Asiatic tribes. The other class regard them as an ancient European race, the date of whose settlement in Europe is lost in the mists of antiquity. Murray, in his History of European Languages," says that the Slavi probably came into Europe seven or eight centuries before the Christian era. The venerable Abbot Dobroffsky, the learned author of "Institutiones Linguæ Slavica,” says that the people from whom the present great Slavic nations sprang must have separated from the other tribes at least two thousand years before Christ and withdrawn toward the North. Although this great author subsequently expressed a somewhat different view, being influenced by a statement of Tacitus concerning the Venedi, yet Schaffarik, in his "Slavische Alterthümer," has brought forward a mass of testimony in support of the previous view. Ptolemy the geographer, who wrote 175-182 A. D., locates the Welts by the shores of the Baltic Sea, and Schaffarik argues that these Welts were Slavi. The first Slavic historian is the Russian monk Nestor, who wrote about the middle of the eleventh century. He had evidently investigated with considerable. care the traditions of his people. He says nothing about the first appearance of the Slavi in Europe taking place so late as the fifth century. We can hardly conceive it possible that in the space of five hundred years all recollection and tradition of so reinarkable an event should have been entirely effaced. He mentions the tradition which relates that the Apostles Paul |