as to the competency of
the translator in respect to his knowledge of the Bulgarian language;
and it was deemed advisable to put a stop to its further progress.
Among the Albanian portion of its inhabitants, the New Testament has
been distributed by the British and Foreign Bible Society.

In the dearth of all philological helps in respect to the Bulgarian
language, it is matter of grateful acknowledgment to Slavic scholars,
that an American missionary, the Kev. E. Biggs, stationed at Smyrna,
should recently have taken up the subject, and furnished us with a
brief sketch of the principal features of the Bulgarian grammar. It
seems that the Bulgarians have availed themselves of the printing
establishment founded by the American missionaries at Smyrna; and some
books in this language have been there printed. Mr. Kiggs says of the
language, that "its literature is very slender, consisting almost
entirely of a few elementary books, printed in Bucharest, Belgrad,
Buda, Cracow, Constantinople, and Smyrna." A Bulgarian translation of
Gallaudet's "Child's Book on the Soul," was sent by the same gentleman
to New York. From the same source we learn that a Bulgarian version of
the New Testament was printed at Smyrna in 1840, for the British and
Foreign Bible Society; and that in 1844 the first number of a monthly
magazine, entitled "Philology," was issued from the same press.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: See above, pp. 27, 28.]

[Footnote 2: _Wiener Jahrbucher der Literatur_, 1822, Vol. XVII.]

* * * * *

PART III.

WESTERN SLAVI.

CHAPTER I.

CZEKHO-SLOVAKIAN BRANCH.

SECTION I

HISTORY OF THE CZEKHISH OR BOHEMIAN LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE.

Of all the Slavic languages, the Bohemian dialect with its literature
is the only one, which, in the mind of the protestant reader, can
escite a more than general interest. Not so much indeed by its own
nature, in which it differs little from the other Slavic languages;
but from those remarkable circumstances, which, in the night of a
degenerate Romanism, made the Bohemian tongue, with the exception of
the voice of Wickliffe, the first organ of truth. Wickliffe's
influence, however great and decided it may have been, was
nevertheless limited to the theologians and literati of the age; his
voice did not find that responding echo among the common people, which
alone is able to give life to abstract doctrines. It was in Bohemia,
that