dialect like them, but earlier developed and cultivated.  The original mother-tongue, from which they were all derived, must have perished many centuries ago.  But where the Old Slavic was once spoken, and which of the still living dialects has been developed immediately out of it,—­an honour to which all the nations of the eastern stem, and one of the western, aspire,—­is a question which all the investigations and conclusions of able historians and philologians have not hitherto been able to answer in a satisfactory manner.  The highest authorities in Slavic matters are divided on this point.  The disputes relating to it have been conducted with a degree of zeal, little proportioned to its intrinsic importance; nay, recently, with a passion bordering upon fierceness; and what is still more to be regretted, without that regard to truth and candour, which ought to be the foundation of all historical researches.  The great political questions which in the East of Europe have already disturbed the peace of nations—­the idea of Panslavism, the disputed preponderance of Austria or Russia, the jealousy of the Slavic races against the Germans and among each other—­have been allowed to exert a decided influence even on this purely historical question.

The claims of the Russians in this matter have long since been given up as easily refuted; being indeed destitute of any historical foundation.  The circumstance, however, that the language of the Slavic Bible was, in Russia, until the reign of Peter the Great, exclusively the language of books, confirmed the natives for a long time in the belief, that the old Russian and the church Slavic were one and the same language; and that the modern Russian was the immediate descendant of the latter; until modern criticism has better illustrated the whole subject.[1]

The great similarity of the Slovakish language with the Old Slavic, especially of the national dialect spoken by those Slovaks who live scattered through Hungary; and the correspondence of their grammatical forms and flexion, to a degree not found in any other Slavic language; seemed to decide for the Slovaks.  An historical basis is likewise not wanting to this hypothesis; for the Slovaks belonged formerly to the great kingdom of Moravia; where, according to all the ancient historians, Cyril and Methodius lived and taught the longest.[2]

On the other side, the venerable Bohemian Abbot Dobrovsky, who has examined the opinions of his predecessors with more exactness and erudition, and investigated the nature of the different Slavic dialects more deeply than any philologist before him, decides for the Servians.  According to him, the Old Slavic was, in the time of Cyril and Methodius, the Servian-Bulgarian-Macedonian dialect, the language of the Slavi in Thessalonica, the birthplace of these two Slavic apostles.[3]