AMERICAN INFLUENCES IN SLAVIC LITERATURES 515 



that Bulgaria possessed a printing establishment and that the spoken 

 Bulgarian was regularly used in pamphlets and in the Bible. These 

 works served for a time as the only text-books in the few schools 

 that were then established. A few years later American school-books, 

 such as a geography, were translated into Bulgarian and issued 

 from the same press. These were hailed with delight, and served 

 as a valuable addition to the scanty Bulgarian literature by which to 

 educate the younger generation. At about the same time Fotinov, a 

 school-teacher who came under Riggs's influence and who aided him 

 in some of the translations, started the first native periodical, which 

 was based entirely on a similar Greek periodical the labors of the 

 American missionaries for the Greeks. It is from this periodical 

 that Bulgaria dates the beginning of its literature proper, and in 1894 

 the fiftieth anniversary of this periodical was celebrated throughout 

 Bulgaria. It is also interesting to note that in the same year, 1844, 

 Riggs published a brief Bulgarian grammar, the first of the kind. 



In the sixties a new activity was developed by the American 

 missionaries in Bulgaria. Schools were established, American 

 school-books were translated, and special text-books, among them 

 a Bulgarian grammar, were written by the missionaries. Meanwhile 

 the Bulgarians emancipated themselves entirely from their foreign 

 tutelage and regained their independence, this time again at the 

 instigation of an American, who, as mentioned before, wrote out 

 the Bulgarian constitution and had it accepted at St. Stefano. The 

 missionary schools now do not exert any appreciable influence in 

 the Balkan Peninsula, since the Government schools have entirely 

 superseded the denominational establishments, but Roberts College 

 still supplies a fair number of educated men to Bulgaria. At the 

 same time a number of young men come every year to the United 

 States to pursue their work in American universities, and these 

 carry a still more powerful American influence back to their native 

 country. 



The most significant fact in the history of Slavic studies in the 

 first half of the nineteenth century was the publication, in 1S:">4, in 

 1 tie A no" over Rcricir, and later in book form, of the Historical View 

 of the Languages and Literature* of tJie Slavic Xatioiix, by "Talvi." 

 the wife of Professor Robinson of Andover. Previous to th:it time 

 Slavic studies were strictly confined to the Slavic countries, and the 

 outside world knew only something of the Servian folk-songs, with 

 which Grimm and Goethe had become acquainted. Kven in the 

 Slavic countries the interest had not gone beyond narrow scientific 

 circles, and a history of Slavic literature was not yet to be thought 

 of. There existed, indeed, something by that name, written by the 

 Bohemian Dobrovsky, but that was merely a bibliographical sketch. 

 It was Professor Robinson, the husband of the gifted scholar who 



