to be green; Scl. zelie (olus); Lith. zole; Lett. sale. (See Pott, vol. i. p. 141.) To these may be added the Old Prussian sali, herb, and the Sabine fol-ium, foliage.

Although, as members of the Indo-European family, Sclavonian and German contain many roots in common, yet there exists a most striking diversity, particularly in structure, between the two languages.

The Sclavonians prefix no article to their nouns ; in which point they approach much nearer to the Latin, than to the Greek and German, which cannot stir without it. In the construction of sentences also, Sclavonian very nearly resembles the ancient Roman form, so that the Russian language admits of a much more elegant and literal translation of Latin authors, than can be effected in German. This circumstance is the more surprising, since the Russians, as members of the Greek church, have never been subject to the Roman law, or the Latin ritual of the Western church; whilst the German language, in consequence of the Latin influence over it, has always been cultivated after Roman models. (Arndt, p. 88.)

In his " Comparative Grammar," Bopp observes, that the affinity of the Sclavonian with Sanskrit and its European sister languages has been long acknowledged, and that the coincidence in the personal terminations of the verbs is particularly striking. For instance, no one could doubt the coincidence of da-mj, da-si, das-tj, with the Sanskrit dadami, dadasi, dadati, and the analogous forms in Greek and Latin. But except in the single case of the Doric εo-ol, thou art, even Greek has lost the proper termination i of the second person singular: the Sclavonian alone, besides Sanskrit and Zend, has retained the full form si, in common use. However, by the side of the most striking

coincidences in verbs, with the other Indo-European languages, the Sclavonian most strangely presents a still greater dissimilarity in the declensions of its nouns. In philological investigations-in defining the nearer or remoter affinity of diverse idioms, the point to be considered is not whether external diversities exist in certain parts of their grammar, but whether these diversities cannot be reduced to general laws, and the concealed course be detected by which any language arrived at its actual anomalous state. Diversities cease to be such, so soon as the laws are discovered by which the changes in a language are regulated. Such a law Bopp conceives that he has discovered in Sclavonian, which will satisfactorily explain the diversity of its declension-type from that of its sister languages. It is this: that all original final consonants in polysyllabic words have disappeared; and the consonants which now stand at the end of nouns, are final consonants of a second generation only, which have been produced by the loss of the original termination. The necessary effect of such a law must have been to produce a kind of philological revolution, and to stamp the Sclavonian with a character of exclusive peculiarity in the flexion of its nouns. The establishment of the truth of this law solves an important problem in the history of languages. It is only in extreme cases that we can admit of mixed languages, in respect to grammatical inflexions; as these constitute the essential organization of a language; for it is unnatural that a language should borrow forms from different neighbours, and work up the materials into a motley compound. I have never yet seen the least reason for thinking, that completely new and peculiar inflexions have arisen in the later epochs of language. It is, therefore, of

consequence to have been able to show that the Sclavonian affords no exception, in this respect, to the fundamental principles of Philology; and that its grammar contains nothing which is strictly peculiar, or which must have been drawn from some other than a Sanskrit source. With respect to general history, also, since the genealogy and antiquities of nations can be learnt only from the sure testimony of languages themselves, it is of no small importance to have obtained the conviction, through the appliance of Philology, that, without any extensive corruption of the language from heterogeneous races, the Sclavonians, as well as the Greeks, Romans, Germans, Old Prussians, and Lithuanians, belonged to that original people of Asia, whose language has been most nearly preserved in Sanskrit and Zend. (Bopp's Comp. Gram. Preface to Part II.)

CHAPTER II.

ON THE LITHUANIAN LANGUAGES.

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DIALECTS of this inconsiderable but interesting family have been spoken from time immemorial in the countries round the south-east corner of the Baltic sea; and may comprehended, in a general way, under the names Lithuanian, Lettish, and Old Prussian. Lithuanian Proper is the vernacular idiom of the ancient grand duchy of Lithuania: it has some curious points of connexion with the Greek, though under that peculiar form which distinguishes the Medo-European class of languages. Lettish is the dialect of the serfs in Livonia and Courland, and seems to hold an intermediate place; whilst Old Prussian, which was formerly spoken in Ducal or eastern Prussia, more nearly resembles the Latin. Vater, who is their great philologist and antiquarian, states, that "a people with this idiom (the Old Prussians) lived on the coast of the Baltic, between the Vistula, the Pregel, and the Memel. The chief seat of the language was in Samland, between the Pregel

and the western mouth of the Memel, in the Curische Haf; the most westerly districts in which it was spoken, were partly desolated, and partly occupied by German settlers; whilst the most southern provinces became united, either by force or by agreement, with the Lithuanians, and fought under their command against the German invaders 1.”

Each of these three idioms is marked by characteristic peculiarities; but there is a common similarity of language and customs, which unites the people that speak them in one family, and clearly distinguishes them from the German and Sclavonian races. From the extensive relations of Lithuania in the 14th century, its language has become the best known of the family; but the Old Prussian is of equal, if not greater, importance to the philologist and historian. Rurik, who founded the modern empire of Russia in the ninth century, is said by Russian authors to have come from Prussia (Arndt, p. 98); and I shall show, from a comparison of languages and customs, that the still more powerful Romans sprang from the same stock as these tribes, which at present occupy so insignificant a place in the European commonwealth.

About the 12th century, the Lithuanian name is introduced to our notice as that of a fierce and pagan nation, who were at constant war with the Poles; and who, in the year 1235, had established an independent government under the title of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. About this period, the Poles were compelled to call in the assistance of the Teutonic order—a religious and military society, which derived its origin from the crusades. Among the Old Prussian tribes, whom the German knights met with on

1 Die Sprache der alten Preussen, pp. xiii. xxxi.