22 M. Beudanfs Travels in Hungary. 



by the Romans, and passed under their name; such of the Euro- 

 peans as were ever at war one with another, such as rose up 

 after the invasion of the Huns and Avari, these all spoke the 

 Sclavonian language. One of its dialects, the Bohemian, had 

 its golden age in the fourteenth century, and in the beginning 

 of the fifteenth, when, agreeably to the statutes of the Golden 

 Bull of Charles IV., 1359, emperor of Germany and king of 

 Bohemia, every elector of the empire was to learn the Scluvo- 

 nian Bohemian language. At the time of the council of 

 Constance, in 1414, Bohemian literature was in a flourishing 

 state, while in Germany and France the morning of letters had 

 scarcely begun to dawn. With the Sclavonian tongue, a tra- 

 veller might pass through Illyria, Dalrnatia, Croatia, Bosnia, 

 Servia, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, Poland, and Rus- 

 sia, as the languages in all of these are but dialects of it. Most 

 of the Hungarians that have devoted any time to literature, 

 are acquainted, at least, with the three radical languages, the 

 Sclavonic, German, and Latin ; and among the noblesse, I 

 have met with such as speak six or eight different languages. 

 The Hungarian or Magyare language, is sui generis, and has 

 no more affinity with the German or Latin than these have 

 with one another. There are a number of words introduced 

 from other languages, such as Tatar, Turk, Persan, Arab, with 

 others of Finland extraction, also Sclavonian and German 

 words, more or less modified ; but it has a particular and 

 Asiatic character in its suffixes and affixes, at the end of sub- 

 stantives or verbs, in lieu of pronouns. The language has nu- 

 merous vowels, and there are few words that a Frenchman 

 would not easily pronounce, though a German could not with- 

 out difficulty. 



The Wallachian language is a mixture of Sclavonian and 

 Latin, but strangely mutilated. In more than half of its ex- 

 pressions, it bears a striking analogy to the patois, in the south 

 of France and Italy ; with due attention it is easily acquired. 

 In the Hungarian provinces, we meet with little less diver- 

 sity of religious creeds, than of its population. Each nation, 

 each colony, has its particular mode of worship. The inha- 

 bitants, in general, profess the Christian religion, but are divided 

 into a number of different sects. Here are Roman Catholics, 

 Orthodox Greeks, Schismatic Greeks, Lutherans, Calvinists, 

 Socinians, and Anabaptists j these, with the Jewish religion, 

 comprehend the totality of creeds. 



The Roman Catholic religion is that of the state, and of the 

 great body of the people. Its establishment may be traced to 

 the tenth and eleventh centuries, when the Magyares, who had 

 overthrown its first altars, began to grow civilized. 



