From these introductory remarks, we turn again to the historical part of our essay, referring the reader back to our division of the whole Slavic race into Eastern and Western Stems. We have, first of all, that most remarkable Old or Church Slavonic, the language of their Bible, now no longer a living tongue, but still the inexhaustible source of the sublimest and holiest expressions for its younger sisters. Then follow the _four_ languages, perfectly distinct from each other, spoken by the Eastern Slavic nations, viz. the Russian, Illyrico-Servian, Vindish, and Bulgarian. Three of them possess a literature of their own; and one of them, the Illyrico-Servian, even a double literature; for political circumstances and the influence of the early division of the oriental and occidental churches, having unfortunately split the nation into two parts, caused them also to adopt two different methods of writing one and the same language, as we shall show in the sequel. And lastly, among the Slavic nations of the Western stem, we find either _three_ or _four_ different languages, according as we regard the Czekhish and Slovakian idioms as essentially the same or distinct, viz. the Bohemian, [Slovakian,] Polish, and Sorabic in Lusatia. Of these, the first and third have each an extensive literature of its own.[25]
[Footnote 1: See Schlegel's _Sprache und Weisheit der Indier_, Heidelb. 1808. Von Hammer's _Fundgruben des Orients_, Vol. II. p. 459 sq. Murray's _History of the European Languages_, Edinb. 1823. F.G. Eichhoff, _Histoire de la Langue et de la Literature des Slaves etc. considerées dans leur origins Indienne, etc._ Paris, 1839.--Frenzel, who wrote at the close of the seventeenth century, took the Slavi for a Hebrew tribe and their language for Hebrew. Some modern German and Italian historians derive the Slavic language from the Thracian, and the Slavi immediately from Japhet; some consider the ancient Scythians as Slavi. See Dobrovsky's _Slovanka_, VII. p. 94,]
[Footnote 2: _Krivitshi_. The Greek is _Krobuzoi_, Herodot 4. 49. Comp. Strabo VII. p. 318, 319. Plin. H.N. IV. 12.]
[Footnote 3: The first writers, who mention the Slavi expressly, are Jordan or Jornandes, after A.D. 552; Procopias A.D. 562; Menander A.D. 594; and the Abbot John of Biclar before A.D. 620. See Schaffarik's _Geschichte der Slavischen Sprache und Literatur_, Buda, 1826. Dobrovsky's _Slovanka_, V.p. 76-84.--Schaflarik, in his more recent work on _Slavic Antiquities_, 1838, and in his _Slavic Ethnography_, 1842, supposes he has found the first Slavi already three centuries B.C. in the Veneti or Wendi on the Baltic. But as every connecting link between them and the _historical_ Slavi is wanting, the fact seems of little importance.]