Slavonians to the other Indo-European Nations. 21 
As to their languages, from ancient Ruthenian have sprung three 
living dialects, Modern Russian, Vernacular Ruthenian, and the 
Ecclesiastical or Cyrillic Slavonian. The Polish has also formed 
three written dialects : the literary, the Mazovian or the ordinary 
dialect, and Cassubian or Wendic. 
The difference of these (so called) languages is much the same as 
between the Greek dialects. Russian is the open form, as was the 
latter Ionic. Polish is the contracted, as the Attic, The Cyrillic 
or Church Russian is the antique form, as the Homeric. The 
Bohemian is aspirated, the Servian is euphonized. 
Russian, Servian, and Cyrillic have their own characters, adopted 
partly from Greek, partly from Coptic and Armenian. The Polish 
and Bohemian use the Latin spelling, with a characteristic accentua- 
tion for Asiatic sounds. The cause of this difference of spelling is 
manifest. Where the Latin church has conquered, the Latin 
character has prevailed in Slavonia, elsewhere the native alphabet 
*' Azbuka " remains intact. 
A, We shall now briefly consider the Slavonic according to its 
individual characteristics and affinity to the Classical, Semetic, and 
Anglican tongues. 
I. Taking Slavonic as a whole, we find its sound, as the language 
of a martial race, harsh, strong, concise, with now and then words 
of excessive sweetness, memorials of a soft and sunny clime. 
It embraces nearly all the tones capable of being uttered by the 
human voice, and thus must have more harsh than melodious words. 
The " ci " and " zzi " of Italian, the aspirated sibilants of English, 
the nasals and ** j^" of French, the gutturals and aspirates of 
German and Greek are mingled with the Asiatic **L" and other 
sounds peculiar to Slavonic. Thus arises the, almost proverbial, 
facility of the Russians and Poles in acquiring and correctly pro- 
nouncing foreign languages. The English and Greek " theta " can 
alone trouble them, for all others are in their own language. 
