After having ceased for centuries to be a language of common life, the Old Slavic has of course lost that kind of pliancy and facility, which only a living language, employed to express all the daily wants of men, can possibly acquire.  But for this same reason it has gained infinitely in solemnity and dignity.  Imposing by its very sound, exciting in the minds of millions sanctifying religious associations, it seems to have grown almost unfit for any vulgar use, and to have become exclusively devoted to holy, or at least to serious and dignified subjects.

There are, as we have mentioned above, many circumstances, which seem to justify the opinion, that the Slavi were very early in possession of a degree of cultivation, which would make it indeed difficult to believe, that they should not have known how to read and write before the ninth century.  Ditmar of Merseburg, the German, speaks of the inscriptions with which the pagan Obotrites, the Slavic inhabitants of Mecklenburg, used to cover their idols.  The southern Slavi had much greater advantages.  Neighbours of the Greeks, and in constant intercourse with them; both as a nation, by war and traffic, and through individuals who lived at the court of Constantinople; it can hardly be supposed, that no earlier attempt should have been made to adapt the Greek alphabet to the Slavic language, or to invent a new one founded on that basis.  There was however not a single satisfactory proof, that this was ever done with any degree of success before that time; notwithstanding all the grounds by which some modern writers, zealous and eloquent advocates of this opinion, endeavoured to support it.[10] It is only since Kopitar’s discovery of some Glagolitic manuscripts at least cotemporary with the most ancient Cyrillic documents known, that this question has taken another aspect.  But whether there existed already a Slavic alphabet or not, it is very doubtful whether Cyril knew it; since the Slavic tribes among whom he and Methodius lived, were not acquainted with it; for all the legends and early historical annals agree in calling Cyril the inventor of the Slavic alphabet.

This alphabet, as arranged by Cyril, is founded on the Greek.  In adjusting it, Cyril employed all the Greek characters; although a few of them have so much altered their shape in the course of time, as hardly to be recognized in their present form, e.g. the Z and the H of the Greeks.  The first has the English, not the Greek pronunciation of that letter; the latter in its altered shape is the common I of the Slavic language, and thus corresponds with the pronunciation of the modern Greeks.  The H or Eta in an unaltered form, on the other hand, is the N of the Slavic alphabet.  The Greek B, ss, went over into the still softer sound of V, v;[11] and another sign was selected for Buki or B.  This and all the characters to denote Slavic sounds, which he did