60 MEMOIR OF PALLAS. 
and government, but devotes a large portion of his 
work to an account of their religion, which is truly 
shocking and singular in its essence and history. 
It is not a little astonishing that this work has not 
been translated either into French or English, whilst 
every day increases the number of travels which are 
of infinitely less value. “ This is a work,” says 
Mr Tooke in his Russia Ilustrata, “ that will enrich 
the stock of human knowledge with discoveries, the 
greatest part entirely new, and which no person but 
Professor Pallas is able to communicate.” 
A most important part of the history of nations, 
and one which enables us to penetrate farther into 
the antiquity of their history than all written docu- 
ments, is the knowledge of their language. It is by 
it we can judge of their origin, and can better follow 
their genealogy than by all their traditions; and 
there is no government which can more promote this 
important study than that of Russia, whose subjects 
speak sixty different languages. Catherine II. con- 
ceived the ingenious idea of making a digest of the 
vocabularies of all the tribes which yielded obedi- 
ence to her sceptre: she actually commenced this 
work herself, and then charged Professor Pallas, who 
was the individual who had seen most of these hordes, 
and was best acquainted with their language, to col- 
lect together all the Asiatic vocabularies, at the same 
time restricting him to a list of words which she 
had drawn up. Hence the two quartos under the 
title “ Linguarum totius Orbis Vocabularia Com- 
paratica.” It is not matter of astonishment that a 
