erses of a Chinese princess, who laments
that she had been condemned by her parents to a distant exile, under a
Barbarian husband; who complains that sour milk was her only drink, raw
flesh her only food, a tent her only palace; and who expresses, in
a strain of pathetic simplicity, the natural wish, that she were
transformed into a bird, to fly back to her dear country; the object of
her tender and perpetual regret. [37]

[Footnote 27: M. de Guignes (tom. ii. p. 1--124) has given the original
history of the ancient Hiong-nou, or Huns. The Chinese geography of
their country (tom. i. part. p. lv.--lxiii.) seems to comprise a part of
their conquests. * Note: The theory of De Guignes on the early history
of the Huns is, in general, rejected by modern writers. De Guignes
advanced no valid proof of the identity of the Hioung-nou of the
Chinese writers with the Huns, except the similarity of name. Schlozer,
(Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte, p. 252,) Klaproth, (Tableaux
Historiques de l'Asie, p. 246,) St. Martin, iv. 61, and A. Remusat,
(Recherches sur les Langues Tartares, D. P. xlvi, and p. 328; though in
the latter passage he considers the theory of De Guignes not absolutely
disproved,) concur in considering the Huns as belonging to the Finnish
stock, distinct from the Moguls the Mandscheus, and the Turks. The
Hiong-nou, according to Klaproth, were Turks. The names of the Hunnish
chiefs could not be pronounced by a Turk; and, according to the same
author, the Hioung-nou, which is explained in Chinese as detestable
slaves, as early as the year 91 J. C., were dispersed by the Chinese,
and assumed the name of Yue-po or Yue-pan. M. St. Martin does not
consider it impossible that the appellation of Hioung-nou may have
belonged to the Huns. But all agree in considering the Madjar or Magyar
of modern Hungary the descendants of the Huns. Their language (compare
Gibbon, c. lv. n. 22) is nearly related to the Lapponian and Vogoul. The
noble forms of the modern Hungarians, so strongly contrasted with the
hideous pictures which the fears and the hatred of the Romans give
of the Huns, M. Klaproth accounts for by the intermingling with other
races, Turkish and Slavonian. The present state of the question is
thus stated in the last edition of Malte Brun, and a new and ingenious
hypothesis suggested to resolve all the difficulties of the question.
Were the Huns Finns? This obscure question has not been debated till
very recently, and is ye