realizing a long cherished idea. A great congress of all
the Slavic nations was convoked at Prague. But at that very moment, at
the gathering together of so many members of that wide-spread family,
it became strikingly apparent that they were a _family_ of nations;
but could never again become, what for thousands of years they had not
been, _one_ nation. In order to be understood, several of their
deputies had to speak in German; and even for the journal founded as
the great central organ of Slavism, the _German_ language had to be
employed.

The patriotic efforts made to prevent the Bohemian language from
gradually yielding to the German, are honourable and laudable; but
whether they will have any ultimate result seems to be quite doubtful.
The times indeed are somewhat changed, since Jungmann called the
present literature of Bohemia "the produce of a few enthusiasts, who,
exposing themselves to the hatred of their enemies and the ingratitude
of their countrymen, have devoted themselves to the resuscitation of a
language, neither living nor dead." Twenty-five years have brought on
a great revolution; and those enthusiasts are no longer "a few." But
they have still a hard combat to fight. It may be doubtful whether
their strength will hold out to struggle against the torrent of time;
which, in its resistless course, overwhelms the nations, and only
throws their vestiges in scattered fragments on the banks, as feeble
memorials to show to an inquiring posterity that they once
existed.[52]

SECTION II.

LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE OF THE SLOVAKS.

The northwestern part of Hungary is inhabited by the Slovaks, a Slavic
nation, who appear to be the direct descendants of the original Slavic
settlers in Europe. Numerous colonists of the same race are scattered
all over the other parts of that country. The Byzantine historians,
and, somewhat later, the Russian annalist Nestor, speak of the region
on the north of the Danube as being the primitive seat of the Slavi.
In early times the _Sarmatae limigantes_ or _Jazyges metanastae_,
nomadic tribes between the Danube and the Theiss, whose name indicates
incontestably their having been Slavi,[53] are mentioned as having
troubled the Byzantine empire. But they soon disappeared entirely from
history, and it is not before the ninth century, when they were
already Christians, that we meet them again. At that time Slovakia, in
Slavic _Slovansko_, viz. the regions adjacent to the two