l extant in monastic
libraries. Venelin, a young Russian scholar, who by his researches on
the Bulgarian, or, as he would fain call it, the _Bolgarian_ language,
had excited great hopes in the learned Slavic world, was sent in 1835
to Bulgaria, by the Russian Archaeographical Commission, to search,
after historical documents and to examine the language. The
publication of a "Bolgarian Grammar," and two volumes of a "History of
the Bolgarians," were the result. While engaged in preparing a third
volume, he died; less regretted by the literary world, it is said,
than would have been anticipated some years before; since his
productions had not justified the expectations raised by his zeal. He
seems to have been one of those visionary etymologists, who found
their conclusions on the analogy of sound and similar accidental
features; a class of scholars, which, in our age of philosophical
research, has no longer much chance of success.

The history of the Bulgarians is a series of continued warfare with
the Servians, Greeks, and Hungarians, on the one hand; and on the
other, with the Turks, who subdued them, and put an end to the
existence of a Bulgarian kingdom in A.D. 1392. The people, first
converted to Christianity by Cyril and Methodius, had hitherto adhered
to the Greek church; except for a short interval in the last half of
the twelfth century, when the Roman chair succeeded in bringing them
under its dominion. Since the establishment of the Turkish government,
apostasy to Muhammedanism has been more frequent in Bulgaria, than in
any other of the Christian provinces of the Porte. Still, the bulk of
the population has remained faithful to the Slavic Greek worship. The
scanty germs of cultivation sown among them by two or three of their
princes, who caused several Byzantine works to be translated into the
Bulgarian dialect, perished during the Turkish invasion. The few
books used by the priesthood in our days, are obtained from Russia.
They have no trace of a literature, and the only point of view from
which their language, uncultivated as it is, can excite a general
interest, is in respect to their popular songs. In these this dialect
likewise is said to be exceedingly rich.

The Russian Bible Society had prepared a Bulgarian translation of the
New Testament, intended more especially for the benefit of the
Bulgarian inhabitants of the Russian province of Bessarabia. But the
specimen printed in 1823 excited some doubt