to other Branches of Knowledge. 329 



their way to the Euxine and Caspian. The Valdai Moun- 

 tains were for many ages the boundary which separated the 

 Slavonic Russians from the people of this second race, who oc- 

 cupied the northern border of Europe and of Asia. The 

 tribes who now belong to this class of nations in Europe, are 

 the Finns, the Lappes, the Magyars in Hungary, and a va- 

 riety of nations spread through all the northern regions of 

 Russia, from the White Sea to far beyond the Uralian Moun- 

 tains. 



On the high table-land of Asia, other great divisions of 

 people constitute the main part of the Tartarian stock. 

 They are the Turkish, the Mongolian, and the Mantchu-Tar- 

 tars. It was from this family that all those nations were de- 

 scended who poured themselves down, during all the middle 

 ages, upon Christendom and the East, who first overran 

 the caliphat and the Asiatic parts of the Byzantine Empire, 

 and afterwards under Tchingis Khan, conquered all the 

 countries intervening between the Sea of Japan and the 

 Danube. The discovery of a real and deeply rooted affinity 

 between the languages of these nations, was a more difficult 

 enterprise than the tracing of relations between the Indo- 

 European languages. The nations of High Asia who be- 

 long to this stock, have passed under the general name of 

 Tartars, given to the followers of Tchingis. The tribes of 

 analogous speech in the northern parts of the Russian em- 

 pire are termed, by the Russians, Tchudes and Ugres or 

 Ogors. Hence the name of Ugro-Tartar, which compre- 

 hends the whole family. The writers who have explored 

 the history of these idioms are Dobrowsky, Gyarmathi, a 

 Hungarian, Rask, Vater, Abel Remusat, and lastly Dr Schott 

 of Berlin. The evidence of affinity between these nations 

 themselves is principally that afforded by their languages. 

 It may, however, be deemed historical, since history affords 

 proofs that no other explanation can be found of the pheno- 

 mena ascertained to exist, except that of primitive affinity. 

 We must observe, that the connection of these languages is 

 not merely or principally a resemblance of particular words, 

 such as might have been borrowed by one people from an- 

 other. It is a deeply-rooted affinity in the original elements 



VOL. XLIII. NO. LXXXVI. — OCTOBER 1847. Y 



