ing to every liberal and unprejudiced mind, and can
hardly be explained. For the Sorabians seem to have been at the time
of their submission, superior on the whole to the Germans in respect
to civilization; although in consequence of this contemptuous
treatment, they in the course of time fell far behind them. Despised
and oppressed, they were kept for centuries in a state of ignorance
and neglect; from which, it seems, they could only escape by
renouncing their Slavic peculiarities, and above all their language.
The use of this latter before courts of justice was in the fourteenth
century forbidden by law throughout most of the country. In the
beginning of the same century, the Vendish language was still
sometimes heard at Leipzig, but not afterwards. In the villages also
it became wholly extinct fifty or a hundred years later; and only
single words passed over into the German language. But this was not
the case with their usages and other national peculiarities; there are
still several tribes, nay the peasants of whole provinces in this part
of Germany, in whom the Slavic origin can be distinctly traced.[4]
Their language however was driven into the remotest eastern corner of
their former extensive territory; and is there, and only there, still
to be heard. We speak of the province called Lusatia, situated between
Saxony, Bohemia, Silesia, and Brandenburg, of which the greatest part
is at present under the Prussian dominion, and the smallest but
richest portion under that of Saxony.

_Lushitze_, Lusatia, Germ. _Lausitz_, signifies in Slavic, a low
marshland. This name was formerly applied only to the north-eastern
part of this province, or Lower Lusatia, which is, or was at least at
the time of the Vendish settlement, a country of that description. At
a later period, the name was carried over very improperly to the
south-western part, or Upper Lusatia, a beautiful and mountainous
region. Lusatia was given by Henry I, as a fief, to the margrave of
Meissen. In the course of the following centuries, its two parts were
repeatedly separated and reunited, alternately under the dominion of
the last named margrave, of Poland, or of Bohemia, without however
belonging to the German empire. In the fourteenth century it was at
length incorporated with Bohemia, and remained so for nearly three
hundred years. To this circumstance alone the partial preservation of
the Vendish language is to be ascribed. At the peace of Prague, A.D.