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freedom should be accorded to the French Protestants," at least for an interim," as he expressed it, "if a deluge of blood was to be avoided." In fact, this report was followed by the edict or January, 1562, which granted a recognised existence to Protestantism in that country, and is the basis of the privileges it has since enjoyed there.*

The zeal of neighbouring countries was stimulated by this example, and Geneva especially aided them in their work. The spirit of inquiry in northern Italy, which had called for nine editions of the Scriptures by Malermi before the year 1500, called for as many as thirteen more within seventy years;† while an edition by Bruccioli had been reprinted eleven times before 1579. At Geneva, also, an Italian version was published for the use of Protestants in 1561; and early in the seventeenth century, Diodati, of a noble Italian family, and professor of Hebrew at Geneva, prepared and published, at his own expense, his Italian version, one of the most important translations of modern times. It is remarkably clear, and peculiarly suited for circulation among the poorer classes of his countrymen. In 1562, the New Testament was also translated into Romanese, the whole Bible being translated in 1679. This dialect is spoken in the Grisons by a population amounting to about ninety thousand. The printed versions in other dialects of that district, the Piedmontese, the Catalan, and * Ranke, book v. † Le Long.

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the Vaudois, belong to the nineteenth century, and are among the many trophies of the labours of the British and Foreign Bible Society. In the Daco-Romano, or Wallachian language, (a mixture of the classic and Sclavonic,) the New Testament was published at Belgrade as early as 1648, and the Old Testament was published at Bucharest, the capital, in 1668. The people are members of the Greek church, and amount to about three millions.

At Geneva, moreover, was printed the first edition of the Scriptures in modern Greek. The version was made by Callipoli, 1638, and is remarkable for its close adherence to the Greek text. In one of the prefaces to it, written by Cyril Lucar, the patriarch of Constantinople, who had studied at Geneva, he strongly insists upon the "necessity of presenting the Scriptures in a language intelligible to the people:" therein speaking the sentiments of the whole Greek church. This edition has been frequently reprinted. The Old Testament was not prepared till the year 1819, when Hilarion, the archbishop of Tronovo, completed a version for the British and Foreign Bible Society. This, however, is now superseded by a revised version, printed by that Society at Athens, in 1848. It is curious and interesting to trace, from Paris and the teaching of Lefèvre, the progress of the Bible, till we find it, as we thus do, in the midst of the Mohammedan power in the east.

These last facts we have grouped together, partly because they are connected with Geneva,

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and partly because the languages to which they refer constitute, with the Spanish and Portuguese, the principal members of the Græco-Latin family of tongues.

The Reformation having established the principle that the Bible is the final appeal on every question of religious faith, the work of translation extended on all hands. We have already marked its progress in Germany, in France, and Switzerland, among the Teutonic and GræcoLatin families of speech. One family more in Europe of the INDO-EUROPEAN class still remains to be noticed-the Sclavonic.

The Sclavonic nations and their descendants now number upwards of sixty millions of people, and they occupy a third of Europe. We find them from Petersburgh to the borders of Greece, from Trieste to Adrianople, from Prague to the banks of the Volga. One chief language of these people was in ancient times the Sclavonic, but that is now used exclusively for ecclesiastical purposes. Its various dialects, or, more properly, cognate dialects, (all formed from a yet older tongue,) are the Bohemian, the Russian, the Polish, the Bulgarian, the Carniolan, and the Wendish. All the nations using those tongues needed and must have the Bible.

The history of the old Sclavonic version we have traced. Portions of it were printed, as we have seen, at Cracow, and at Montenegro, before the close of the fifteenth century; various editions of the Gospels were also printed between 1512 and 1562. In 1553, the czar Ivan caused

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a revision of the rest of the New Testament to be prepared. After ten years of labour and delay, the whole was printed at Moscow by John Bogbinder, a native of Denmark. This edition is the first-fruits of the typographical art in Russia. The poor printer, tough favoured by the czar, was accused of heresy and magic, and compelled to flee the country. In 1581, the whole Bible appeared at Ostrog; a second edition being printed in 1633. Between those two dates, seven editions of the New Testament were published. Copies of these editions are now exceedingly rare. In 1712, Peter the Great ordered the Bible to be revised, and in twelve years the work was completed. His death, however, and the opposition of the ecclesiastical authorities, occasioned still further delay; nor was it till the year 1751 that this revision was published. Twenty-one editions appeared up to 1816, when the first stereotyped edition of the Russian Bible Society came from the press. Two hundred and five thousand copies of this version were printed by that Society during the ten years of its existence, and then all further Biblical labour in this form was prohibited by imperial edict.

The history of the Bible in Poland illustrates the force of female piety. The first Christian duke of Poland (Miceslaus) was induced to abandon paganism (965) through the influence of his wife. The first Polish Bible was made prior to 1390, by order of queen Hedwige, wife

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of Jagellon. Another version, or possibly a copy of this previous version, was made by the order of queen Sophia, wife of a subsequent king of the same name (1455.) Only a few fragments of these versions remain.

Since the middle of the sixteenth century, six different versions have been published. The authorized Bible, printed at Cracow in 1599, was designed for Roman Catholics, and was sanctioned by Clement VIII.; it is accounted one of the best translations of the Vulgate, but in two hundred years only three editions had been printed, and those did not comprise three thousand copies. Two Protestant versions have been published, one at the expense of prince Radzivil, in 1563, and the other by the reformed church at Dantzic, in 1632. Thousands of those editions have been bought up and burned by the Jesuits. Both the Roman Catholic edition and the Dantzic edition have been largely published by the Bible Society, and about eighty thousand copies of the Bible and Testament have been issued among ten millions of people.

The Carniolan tongue is a dialect of Sclavonic, spoken in Carinthia and Styria by about three millions of people. The version now in use was made by Truber, a native who was driven from the country for his religious views, and took refuge at Würtemberg. The New Testament was printed at Tubingen in 1557; the Old appeared in 1584, and was executed by Dalmatin, aided by Melancthon. Nearly all