of their social influence. The literary language and style of Russia has been moulded by the cultured few, chiefly upon the pattern of German and French, the tongues gradually adopted by Russian society since the age of Peter the Great and prevalent down to the Crimean war. The more rapidly to civilise his country, Peter, it is well known, favoured the spread of German as a vehicle of official culture. As to French, this, in its brilliant eighteenth century, found its way aided and unaided to Muscovy, as everywhere else. Things remained in this condition until toward the latter end of Nicholas' reign. Intent upon fanning the pride of race upon the eve of a Panslavonic war, Nicholas discountenanced the foreign idioms (which, moreover, had acquitted themselves of their civilising task in the meantime) and reverted to Russ. But the restoration of the old linguistic régime by the Iron Emperor had no power to obliterate the results of the preceding period. Though he certainly made Slavic again the habitual language of the upper classes, Nicholas neither attempted the extermination of the numberless Russian words framed upon German and French patterns in the preceding cosmopolitan epoch, nor did he propose a patriotic return from the clear and elegant forms of Gallic syntax then adopted to the loose and confused structure of the old Muscovite sentence. The imperative example of the Court easily replaced the use of foreign tongues by the national idiom; but the development Russian had derived from copying foreign speech was wisely preserved as a lasting gain and abiding improvement of the vernacular. Owing to this exotic and partially imitative origin of innumerable Russian words, phrases, and grammatical combinations, the language of culture in its higher uses in no European country differs in so many essential points from the popular speech as in Russia. Nothing can be richer than the Russian dictionary, if not in roots, at least in compounds and derivatives; nothing nicer than the shades root-meanings acquire by etymological modifications; but with unmitigated simplicity the villager still uses one and the same word in a promiscuous sense where a host of differentiated terms is habitually employed by the civilised portion of society. Again, nothing can be more analytical, more strictly logical, and concise than the build of a Russian literary sentence, while incompleteness, allusiveness, and vague metaphorical idiomatism still constitute a leading feature of the peasant's brogue. As the necessary consequence of it all, it is easy enough to read a Russian book on metaphysics, but it is hard to exactly comprehend a Muscovite ploughman discussing any commonplace incident in his indefinite lingo. Slavonic philology is not altogether without English ramifications. Reverting at a leap from Russia to Great Britain, we find remnants of Slavonic speech lingering in localities not very far distant from this ancient seat of learning. These relics of a remote linguistic past, it is true, consist only in a few geographical names: Wilton, Wiltshire, Wily. According to early tradition, handed down in Beda's History and vaguely alluded to by Venantius Fortunatus and other chroniclers, the Viltsi, a Slavonic tribe in ancient Pomerania and Brandenburg-the name of Vilt, Wind, Wend formerly applied to many western Slavs-sent colonies from the mouth of the Oder to Holland and England in the fourth and fifth centuries. In England these emigrants from the neighbourhood of Berlin probably founded the town of Wilton; as regards Holland, it seems certain that they occupied Utrecht, the Ulterius Trajectum of the Romans, then called Wiltaburg. Surviving the vicissitudes of many centuries, a small handful of this race still exist in the region whence their ancestors are related to have set out on their journey to Great Britain fourteen hundred years ago. In the Spreewald, a sequestered locality near Berlin, whither they retreated eight hundred years since before the advance of the colonising German, the Wends to this day are a living reality. To this day this interesting remnant of Brandenburg Slavs retain the national name, together with the knowledge of their ancient tongue, which they use in familiar converse along with German. The Brandenburg Wends are a well-to-do and most respectable tribe. Living in a sort of rustic Venice formed by numberless channels of the river Spree, their water-bound settlements remind the startled visitor of the lakedwellings of primitive Europe, and highly deserve inspection by the ethnographer, the painter, and the excursionist. A few months ago, as I was navigating with a Cantabrigian fellow-traveller the endless watercourses of this aquatic region, my companion expressed no little surprise that so very peculiar a district should be unknown to the sightseers of Europe. Whether threading its way through primeval forest, steeped in swamp and lake, or passing along the insulated settlements of a happy and amiable race, the vistas opened up by the gliding boat were invariably curious and picturesque. The inhabitants of these secluded recesses, quick, wiry, and industrious, are an altogether superior sort of rustics, and very well able to take care of themselves in the social struggle of these stirring times. Their women, famous for attachment to children, are frequently engaged as a kind of ornamental nurses by wealthy Berliners, and in their gorgeous national attire, all red, green, and white, attract the attention of foreigners in the streets of the German capital. Notwith |