But the most important work, both in a philological and moral point of view, is the translation of the whole Bible, set on foot by G. Japel, and executed by a society of learned men.  This version being intended for Catholics, was made from the Vulgate, and was published at Laibach 1800, in five volumes; the New Testament appeared also separately, in two volumes, Laib. 1804.  A Slavic pulpit, which was established ten years ago at the same place, has also been of great service to the language.

The inhabitants of the provincial counties Agram, Kreutz, Varasdin, and the neighbouring districts, called Provincial Croatia, who speak a somewhat different dialect of the Vindish language, but are able to read that version of the Bible, have nevertheless several translations in their own dialect, lying in manuscript, and only waiting for some Maecenas, or for some favourable conjuncture, in order to make their appearance.

The only portion of the Vindish race among whom the Protestant religion has been kept alive, are about 15,000 Slovenzi in Hungary.  Their dialect approaches in a like measure to that of the Slovaks; and hence serves as the connecting link between the languages of the Eastern and Western Slavic stems.  For them the New Testament exists in a translation by Stephen Kuznico; Halle 1771; reprinted at St. Petersburg, 1818.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 1:  This portion of the Slavic race was formerly more commonly known under the general appellation of Illyrians.  With the exception of the Bulgarians, who never have been comprehended under it, this name has alternately been applied to the Southern Slavic nations; sometimes only to the Dalmatians and Slavonians; sometimes to them together with the Croatians and Vindes; by others again to the Turkish Servians and Bosnians, etc.  The old Illyrians, i.e. the inhabitants of the Roman province Illyricum, were not Slavi, but a people related to the old Thracians, the forefathers of the present Albanians; see Schaffarik Gesch. p. 33, n. 2. Illyricum Magnum comprised in the fourth century nearly all the Roman provinces of eastern Europe.  Napoleon affected to renew the names and titles of the ancient Roman empire, and called the territory ceded to him by Austria in 1809, viz.  Carniola and all the country between the Adriatic, the Save, and the Turkish empire, his Illyrian provinces, and their inhabitants Illyrians.  In the year 1815 a new kingdom of Illyria was founded as an Austrian province, comprehending Carniola, Carinthia, and Trieste with its territory.  It was partly on account of this indefiniteness, that the name of Illyrians had been entirely relinquished by modern philologists; until it was quite recently again token up by some Croatian and Dalmatian writers.  In its stead the name of Servians, or more properly Serbians, Serbs, has been adopted as a general appellation