Slavonians to the other Indo-European Families. 19 
This title was no vain boast. As the last to leave their native 
seats they perhaps have kept less adulterated than any nation, 
except the Lithuanian tribe (their Venedic cogeners), the ancient 
Aryan tongue of the Indo-Europeans, whence all our European 
languages have sprung. The Slavonic has much of the spirit of 
the Greek, perhaps the next in purity to the lost Aryan, with more 
of the Asiatic element. 
The dual number still exists in Slavonic, nearly 2000 years after 
it has grown disused in Greek. The Asiatic "L," which philolo- 
gists suppose existed in Ancient Greek, is to this day a common 
sound in Polish and Russian, Of the 8 cases that are thought to 
have characterized our Primitive Tongue, and that are still found in 
Sanscrit, Greek has lost 3, Latin 2, but Slavonic only one case, 
dividing the oblique into three : — the Dative, the Instrumental, and 
Locative. If we apply the Vocative test, we shall come to the same 
conclusion that Slavonic is the oldest of living European tongues. 
"We find in all our modern languages of the West the Vocative 
totally absent. In Latin it can be traced to only one declension. 
In Greek, though more frequent, it is usually like the nominative. 
But in the Slavonic it assumes as distinct a character as the 
Accusative does. 
All these facts tend in one direction, to demonstrate the antiquity 
of the Slavonic, for modern research has proved the seeming 
paradox : — " Languages are more complicated according to their 
Antiquity." We all know how much more difficult Greek and 
Latin are than their offspring French and Italian. English is 
simpler than Anglo-Saxon. The reason is dubious, the fact has 
been demonstrated, and on this analogy lies one of the main proofs 
of the antiquity of Slavonian. 
This language has been most unjustly neglected in the West. It 
is the vernacular of nearly 80 millions of the human race in Europe 
alone ; thus far exceeding the French, and possibly even English in 
general use. This calculation may sound extravagant, but we must 
consider the numerous dialects— the Russian, Polish, Bohemian, 
