morality of the higher classes in this country, which his adventures and correspondence afford.

We have given very fair specimens of the matter and manner of the volume before us, and an outline of its contents, with such remarks as were imperiously demanded from us by our sense of the moral duty of exhibiting to our readers the real scope and purpose of a series of shallow sophisms and false assumptions, wrapped up in bundles of metaphors, put forth with a specious semblance of reason and liberality, and directed to the single end of upholding all abuses and delusions by which the aristocracy profit. In the second volume, Mr. Moore will be on more perilous ground. To do justice to his friends who are gone, and to please those among the living, whose favor he most studiously courts in his writings, must be, in the treatment of that period which his second volume will embrace, impossible. He will endeavour to do both, after his fashion: and we think we can pretty accurately anticipate the result.

ART. II-Kralodworsky Rukopis. Zbirka Staročeskych Zpiewoprawnych Basnj, s niekolika ginymi Staročeskymi Zpiewy. Nalezen a wydan od Waclawa Hanky, knihownjka k. narodnjho Musea s diegopisnym uwodem od Waclawa Aloysia Swobody c. k. prof: tr: Human. W Praze. 1829.

;

Königinhofer Handschrift, &c. i. e. Manuscript of the Queen's Court;

a collection of Old Bohemian Lyrico-Epic Songs, with other ancient Bohemian poems. Discovered and published by Wenceslaus Hanka, and translated by Wenceslaus Aloys Swoboda. Prague. 1829.

AMONG the Slavonian nations there has been of late years a strong literary excitement-and contributions have been industriously levied on all the accessible records of antiquity. The stream of inquiry has strongly set upon the traditions and the fragments of the past, while such of its remains as still live in the memories and the songs of the people, have been gathered together with the most devoted zeal. The political position of all of the Slavonic races will explain the reason of this tendency to look rather backwards on that which has been than forwards to that which shall be. In despotic countries men cannot engage in discussions which regard the present or the future without giving umbrage to those whose quiet might be disturbed, if it were discovered and proclaimed that some concessions must be made to advancing civilization. The mind fettered in its inquiries and fearful of their consequences cannot expatiate widely-nor desire nobly-nor

enlarge proudly-in the prison-house where a censorship has placed it. It seeks rather some scene-some subject-where it may revel in its own free will-pursue its unmolested dreamings, and indulge its generous affections. And this it does in the retrospect of the past. To rear up piles of policy and power out of its patriotic hopes is wholly prohibited; its only privilege is to revert to those realities which memory offers to it from the days of old. Independence, liberty, self-government, are blessings which it may dwell upon as having beenbut which it would be dangerous to anticipate as yet to be. Yet it is curious, it is instructive, to see how the full tide of affection rushes back upon the events with which national glory and greatness are connected; how the love of country lingers among those circumstances where it may wander about unchecked-how fondly every name is cherished that battled for fatherland and freedom; how thoughts which may not be expressed tinge other thoughts that may, and enable one to discover in the slight motion of the surface the deep strong current below.

It has been estimated, and the estimate is probably rather under the real number, that more than sixty millions of men speak the Slavonic dialects-and occupy nearly one half of the whole European territory. Whence they came and how they spread is an inquiry with which many authors have occupied themselves with very fruitless toil. Under the name of barbarians-Goths, Vandals, Huns, Slaves, and Sarmatians, have been confounded by those who know nothing of their language, literature, or history.

The Slavonian tribes may be conveniently arranged into eight great classes-the Russian, Servian, Croatian, and Wendish, make the south-eastern division: and the north-western division consists of the Bohemian, Slovakian, Polish and Sorbian; Russia has about forty-five millions of Slavonian subjects; Austria fifteen millions; Prussia two-and-a-half millions; Turkey two millions; Cracow one hundred thousand; Montinegro sixty thousand, and Saxony fifty thousand. Of these again about forty millions are of the Greek, twenty millions of the Roman Catholic, and two of the Protestant rituals;—and the affiliated but distinct languages of the several divisions are the Russ spoken in Russia; the Servian in Servia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and with some modifications in Bulgaria-the Croatian in Croatia, west Hungary, Dalmatia and the Adriatic coasts-the Wendish, the dialect of Illyria, and in that part of Austrian Slavonia known as the land of the Wends, or of the Slovenians; the Bohemian being the language of Bohemia and Moravia; the

Slovakian that of Upper Hungary; the Sorbian that of Lausitz anciently Sorabia; and lastly the Polish of Poland and Polish Silesia. All these branches probably descend from the ancient Slavonian, the Lingua Slavica, which is still used in the church services of Russia. The Russians and Servians have preserved the Slavonic alphabet, modified, however, to more elegant forms. The Poles and Bohemians have adopted the Latin character; producing their peculiar sounds by combinations of the letters. Many of the other races have combined the two alphabets, retaining the Slavonian letters wherever they found no representative in the Roman, and using the Roman wherever they were absolutely synonymous with the Slavonian. some respects these nations have been benefitted by the tardy birth of their literature-the Russians having discarded many supernumerary and useless letters of the old church alphabet, and the Servians have discarded more; so that the Servian orthography is simple, intelligible and beautiful, while that of the more cultivated Slavonic nations, whose books and written language have existed for centuries, is encumbered with many inconveniences, difficulties and contradictions, of which it is now not easy, from long and stubborn habit, to get rid.

In

It has been the fate of the Slavonian people to be visited with much contempt and vituperation from those who, without any means of accurate judgment, take pleasure and pride in flinging out their scorn upon nations. To study-to inquireto inform themselves before-hand, is no part of the business of these precipitate misanthropists. They can judge, and condemn, and vilify millions, on a thousandth part of the evidence they would require for the castigation of a single pick-pocket. And the matter is yet worse when misfortune itself is made the ground of calumny. M. Hacquet, in describing Illyria and Dalmatia, abuses all the Slavonians as thieves, and says that they sit content and pleased under the yoke of the most odious despotism. Even Hungarians, themselves, in turn the objects of attack, have been found to fling upon their Slavonian neighbours such contumelies as "good-for-nothing, clay-soiled, miserable, head-and-foot-straw-covered Tóts."* One public

instructor has the kindness to bid his readers remember that the "Slavonian people are made of other materials than the Germans (according to him God hath not, as holy writ with equal truth and beauty assures us, made of one blood all nations upon earth) that they are by nature of another order of men

Hitvány, tsapós, élhetetlen, kórólábú Tótok."--Dugonics in his celebrated romance "Etelka."

+ Neumanns Natur des Menschen, i. 59-62.

given by the eternal purposes of Providence to be subjects of those Germans who are the ornaments of creation, and the sovereigns of the world for ever." Ignorant and insolent calumniator! compared to whom the meanest peasant of Slavonia is an object of interest and affection in the mind of any good man. And in the same spirit does the flippant Abbé de Pradt exclaim, "For me Europe finishes at the Oder. On the other side is a language strange to Europe [strange to you, most learned Abbé !]-Poland is not Asia-but-it is not Europe."-" Among the Poles the eye loses all its expression-the dwellings are abodes of misery, filth, and vermin," and so forth.

In the name of justice-in the name of common sense-in the name of humanity-if nations are thus to be sentenced, let it be by competent tribunals. It is beyond all endurance that such professional and shallow slanderers as these should be allowed to run about the world with their unholy missions of war and evil will. In the different branches of the Slavonian stem there is alike the greatness which imposes, and the feebleness which demands respect. They affect us by gigantic political power on the one side, and interest us by their enslaved position on the other. The might of Russia-the struggles of Poland-the old glories of Bohemia-each in its turn is an object well fitted to engage the philanthropist and the philosopher. And little indeed have they studied the history of man, and most ill qualified are they to judge of his destiny and his deservings, who see, even in his lowest degradation, any thing but a claim upon them to help, to encourage, and to elevate him. Deep as he may be in the dust, his origin and his end are as divine as theirs - he is as worthy as they of kindness-and far worthier of mercy.

It is not intended here to indulge in any of those vague terms of laudation, which if more amiable, are just as little discerning as this language of dispraise. Yet no one can have visited the Slavonian nations without observing the patient endurance with which they pursue their daily labours, whether agricultural or commercial-the habitual serenity, which if it deny them the more violent ebullition of pleasure, saves them from the gloom of deep despondency-the love of music so universal that, as Schafferich 66 says, Wherever the Slavonian woman is, there is song song that fills house and garden, hill and valley, field and forest, orchard and vineyard. She sings in the summer heats, in the labour of the day; in hunger and thirst she sings." —their nationality, which has preserved their language through

* Histoire de l'Ambassade en Varsovie, p. 71-3.

a thousand invasions; their peaceful, social spirit. In a word, their history is neither tainted with violence nor polluted with blood, while it offers all the interest of remarkable events and the relief of highly-distinguished actors.

The Bohemians, whose name is derived from Bojohemum, or Home of the Bojers, occupied Bohemia in the sixth century, and call themselves Ceskians or Cechians, and their country Cechy. Of the whole number of inhabitants of Bohemia and Moravia about two thirds are Slavonians, the rest are for the most part of Teutonic race. Their language has, perhaps, been more acted on than any other of Slavonian origin by foreign dialects. It lends itself with great readiness to almost every form of verse, and has been very successfully used in most of the ancient classical measures. In the present generation it has been the object of a very patriotic attention on the part of its possessors -and a new enthusiasm for its cultivation has met the repeated attempts of the Austrian government to discourage and extinguish it. In every department of the belles lettres, and in many of the departments of history and science, writers have appeared whose pens might probably have been allowed to rest, but for the indirect attempts to suppress all Bohemian pleadings. The pride and patriotism of the nation are now engaged in the struggle for the preservation of the national idiom, whose extinction has perhaps been retarded many centuries by the measures taken to uproot it.

Waclaw Hanka, the discoverer of the curious manuscript, the title of the second edition of which heads this article, was born at Hořenowes in 1791. His father was a farmer, and up to the sixteenth year of his age, young Waclaw assisted him in the toils of the field. He passed his summers without instruction, and when in winter the inclemency of the weather put an end to out-of-door labour, he repaired to the village school, and got such knowledge as was there accessible. From the spring to the winter he usually watched his father's sheep. The elements of Latin he learned at home, and afterwards completed his knowledge of it at Hradeckralowé (Königgratz). He studied philosophy at Prague, and law at Vienna. His mother tongue was always the object of his passion, and in his earliest days "he moralised in song." Polish and Servian troops had been quartered on his father's farm, and from these he learned those several dialects. Having excited some attention, the great philologist Dobrowsky became his patron and instructor. His Starobylá Skládanie, of which five volumes have been published is one of the most valuable contributions to the ancient literature of Bohemia. But the bringing out the Kralodworsky