LITHUANIA. 261 



seaboard between the Vistula and the Dvina. They reached far inhmd, as shown 

 by the numerous Lithuanian names occurring especially in Vitebsk, and even one 

 of their tribes, the Golads, formerly occupied the Porotva, a tributary of the 

 Moskva, west of Moscow. The Krivitchians of Smolensk are also supposed to be a 

 mixed Lithuanian and Slav people, and most Slav writers include in the same 

 family the Yatvag-hes, formerly on the Upper Niémen and Bug. About Skidel, 

 near Grodno, there are some communities now speaking White Russian, but with 

 a Lithuanian accent, and otherwise distinguished from the White Russians by 

 their brown complexion, black dress, and customs. They are regarded as descended 

 from the Yatvaghes, although the Lithuanians are all fair. 



During the devastating wars of the thirteenth century the very race itself 

 threatened to disappear, or at least become absorbed in the surrounding elements. 

 But although assailed on three sides at once by the more powerful Poles, Germans, 

 and Russians, they were able to hold their ground, and while yielding in other 

 directions, they seem to have somewhat encroached on the Finns in the north. In 

 several places, however, they became fused with the White Russians, and in all 

 cases of such crossings the Slav element prevailed. 



Still the pure Lithuanian stock is yearly increasing. Flanked on the north by 

 their Lettish kindred, they form a compact mass of about 1,100,000 in an extensive 

 triangular territory, verging westwards on the Baltic, and limited south-east by 

 the irregular Vilna plateau. In the south and south-west the Lithuanian tongue 

 is also current in a few tracts of Russia proper and East Prussia, and in half of 

 the Polish government of Suwalki, raising the total number to nearly 1,500,000. 



The religious coincide on the whole with the ethnical limits. Wherever the 

 Roman Catholic yields to the Orthodox Greek worship, the Lithuanians, mingled 

 with White Russians in speech, but probably Lithuanians in blood, are supplanted 

 by Russian Slavs. Wherever Protestantism is uppermost the people are German 

 or Lett, the influence of the Teutonic Lutherans having been paramount in Livonia. 

 But in Lithuania the Roman Catholic Poles prevailed, and the Lithuanians are 

 accordingly members of the Roman Church. 



The Lithuanians, or Lëtuvininkaï, are divided into two distinct national 

 groups — the Lithuanians properly so called, in the eastern districts of Vilna and 

 Kovno, and the Zemailey Samogitians, or Jmudes, mainly on the German frontier. 

 The two branches differ in speech as well as in national customs, though the two 

 dialects are essentially one in their fundamental features. Of all European tongues 

 the Lithuanian comes nearest to Sanskrit, still retaining many words less 

 removed from the primitive Aryan than the corresponding Slavonic, Latin, or 

 German terms. A good Lithuanian grammar has been compiled by. Schleicher, 

 but the literature is poor. When the Lithuanian power was at its height 

 there were no writers in the national speech, and the clergy persecuted the 

 bards, or hurtinikas, who recited the traditional songs. A chronicler of the six- 

 teenth century speaks of epic poems, but none have been recovered, and the 

 only poem of any length is that of the " Seasons," composed by a certain Donaleitis 

 in the eighteenth century. There are, however, numerous songs, fables, idyls, all 



