ces adjacent
to Galicia, all were subjugated by Poland. We speak of this kingdom as
it was at the time of its first partition between Russia, Austria, and
Prussia. Of the four or five millions of inhabitants in the provinces
united with Russia at the three successive partitions of 1772, 1793,
and 1795, only one and a half million are strictly Poles, that is,
Lekhes, who speak dialects of that language;[5] in White and Black
Russia, the Russniaks are by far more numerous; and in Lithuania the
Lithuanians. Besides the independent language of these latter, the
Malo-Russian and White Russian dialects are spoken in these provinces;
and all documents of the grand-duchy of Lithuania before it was united
with Poland in A.D. 1569, were written in the latter.[8]

The Polish language is farther spoken: 1) By the inhabitants of the
kingdom of Poland formed in 1815, three and a half millions in number,
or reckoned together with the Poles of the Polish-Russian provinces,
five millions; 2) By the inhabitants of the cities and the nobility of
Galicia, belonging to Austria, and the Poles in the Austrian part of
Silesia, about three millions; 3) By the inhabitants of the small
republic of Cracow, about one hundred thousand; 4) By the inhabitants
of the Prussian grand-duchy of Posen, and a part of the province
called Western Prussia, together with the Poles in Silesia and the
Kassubes in Pomerania; In all less than two millions.[7]

Thus the Polish language is spoken by a population of about ten
millions.[8] Like all living languages, it has different dialects, and
is in one place spoken with greater purity than in another. As these
varieties, however, are neither very striking nor have ever had an
influence on literature, they do not concern us here.

The ancient Polish language seems to have been very nearly related to
the dialects of the Czekhes and the Sorabian Vendes. Although very
little is known in respect to the circumstances and progress of the
formation of the language into its present state, it is sufficiently
obvious, that it has been developed from the conflict of its natural
elements with the Latin and German idioms. Of the other Slavic
dialects, the Bohemian is the only one which has exerted any influence
upon the Polish tongue. The Italian and Turkish words introduced
during the dominion of an Italian priesthood, and through the
political relations of the Poles and the Turks, never entered deeply
into the body of the la