It is, however, probable that at least one Slavic idiom was cultivated to a certain degree in very ancient times; for from the single circumstance, that Cyril’s translation of the Bible, written in the middle of the ninth century, bears the stamp of uncommon perfection in its forms, and of great copiousness, it is sufficiently evident, that the language must have been the means of expression for thinking men several centuries before.  There is, indeed, no doubt that the state of the language, as it appears in that translation, required no short interval of preparation.

The first attempts to convert portions of the Slavic race to Christianity were probably made before the seventh century; but it was only at the beginning of the ninth that their partial success became of importance to their language and literature.  It is true, that by the last investigations of the late great Slavist, B. Kopitar, the fact has been ascertained, that a portion of the Slavic race was already in possession of an alphabet before Cyril;[8] but as this fact appears to have had no further result, we must still consider the ninth century and Cyril’s translation of the Gospels as the beginning of their literary history, the dawn at least of a brighter day.

Before we enter upon our examination of the different branches, we must not neglect to direct the attention of the reader to the whole great trunk, which in the most ancient times appears to have ramified into two principal stems.

A boundless confusion indeed reigns in the classification of the Slavic nations among the earlier historians and philologists.  It was the learned Dobrovsky of Prague, who first brought light into this chaos, and established a classification, founded on a deep and thorough examination of all the different dialects, and acknowledged by the equally great authority of Kopitar.  Adelung, in his Mithridates,[9] has adopted it.  The specific names, however, Antes and Slavi, which Adelung applies to the great divisions, and which were first used by Jornandes, are arbitrary, and less distinct than those adopted by Dobrovsky, Kopitar, and Schaffarik; who divide all Slavic nations, according to certain philological affinities and differences, into the North-Western and South-Eastern Stems.[10]

Far better would have been the terms ‘Northern and Western,’ ‘Southern and Eastern,’ divisions; which indeed can be the only proper meaning of those appellations.  The Slovaks in Hungary, for instance, who belong to the first division, can in no way be called a North-Western people; and the Russians, who belong to the second, still less a South-Eastern nation.  The origin from the South is common to all the Slavic tribes; hence the appellation of Northern and Southern can be applied to them only in a relative sense; and that portion of the Slavic race, which inhabits Russia, is not known to have ever lived in a more southern region than their Bohemian brethren.  We adopt, therefore, the division of the Slavi into EASTERN and WESTERN Stems; which seems indeed to be the only strictly proper one.[11]