20 Ethnographical Memoir on the Nations of Slavonian Race. 



their way Bohemia and Moravia. Eginhart, the biographer of Charlemain, 

 mentions several Slavonic nations among the people conquered by that 

 celebrated warrior, as tlie Weletabes, tlie Sorabes, Abotrites, and Boiohsemi. 

 He says that they differed but little from each other in dialect : — "Lingu^ 

 quidem poent; similes." Dobrowsky enumerates the dialects spoken by all 

 the various nations of the Slavonian race, as follows. To the eastern divi- 

 sion, as he says, belong, first, the Russian ; second, the old Slavonian, the 

 ecclesiastic or literary dialect of this language ; third, the modern Slavonic, 

 or lUyrian dialect, spoken in Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia, Dalmatia ; fourth, 

 tlie Croatian ; fifth, the Windish, spoken by the people termed Winds, in 

 Carinthia, Carniola, Stiria, or Steyermark, together with the variety of 

 the Windish spoken in the county of Eisenberg. To the western branch 

 of Slavonian dialects belong, first, the Slovakian ; second, the Bohemian 

 language ; third and fourth, the Wendish in Upper and Lower Lusatia ; 

 fifth, the Polish, with the Silesian variety of that language. 



Dobrowsky distinguishes the dialects belonging to these two classes of 

 Slavonic idioms by certain particles, the use of which is common to a 

 whole class, and unknown to the forms of speech which belong to the 

 other class. I need not specify these, but shall merely remark, that the 

 dialects of the Slavonian language, though numerous and clearly marked, 

 and even constituting groupes severally distinguishable, are yet by no 

 means so remote from each other as are many idioms which are universally 

 regarded as dialects of one language. 



The Eastern Branch of the Slavonic Race, including the Russians and 

 Southern Slavonians. 



1. Of the Russians. 



The Russians, or Muscovites, are one of the nations descended from that 

 branch of the Slavonic race which is termed by Jordanes, Antes, and by 

 Dobrowsky, the eastern division of the Slavi. The Russians are by far 

 the most numerous and extensively spread; and they occupy the regions 

 farthest to the eastward of all the nations belonging to this stock. 



The earliest notices that are discovered of the Antes, are in the Gothic 

 history of Jordanes, who mentions the conquest of that division of the 

 Slaves, by Vinitar, the successor of Hermanric, king of the Goths. Vinitar 

 was at tliat time tributary to the Huns. He subdued the Antes, who in- 

 habited the country lying northward of the Euxine. This tribe was after- 

 wards liberated from the Gothic yoke, by the assistance of the Huns. The 

 following is a brief sketch of the subsequent history of the Russians, as 

 deduced by Von Schlotzer from the Annals of Nestor. 



The Russian people consisted in the earliest times of many independent 

 tribes, who are spread over the regions extending northward from the 

 mouths of the Danube. In these countries they were not remotely sepa- 



