dren of men." There would seem a tautology in regarding the verb a, in each case, as referring to the same turning, besides making the command follow the execution: "Thou turnest man to decay, and thou sayest return." It may, indeed, have both senses, and may have been intended to bear both, according as it appeals to our humility or our hope.

"Lord, what is man that thou dost so remember him,' man physically allied to all that is lowest in creation,-man who "says to corruption, thou art my father, to the worm thou art my mother and my sister." True it is, that spiritually he is "made in the image of God;" he is allied to the uncreated and the eternal; but it is in his physical as well as in his spiritual relations that God remembers him. The hyperplatonic scorn of the body has no warrant in the Scriptures. "Thou wilt long for the work of thy hands." God remembers the crumbling body as well as the undissolving soul. It is the whole of man that he loves; as in the case of those who are saved it is the whole of man that he remembers unto salvation. This is the wondrous anthropopathy that we have been tracing in the Old Scriptures. It is not merely an incidental accommodation, but a designed incarnation of a divine thought. The Bible is a book of contrasts. Its writers betray no sense of inconsistency in setting forth, sometimes in closest contiguity, the melting goodness, the inexorable severity of God; they seem to fear no charge of paradox when they present, and, sometimes, in the same vivid picture, the vileness and the greatness of man.

ART. IV.-ILLYRIAN LITERATURE.

MANY and various are the accounts that have been given by the different nations of the creation of the world, its relations to the other bodies in the heavens, and the formation on its surface of continents, mountains, oceans, and rivers. As to the mountains, the inhabitants of Montenegro have a summary way of disposing of the question that relieves it of all difficulty. They represent the Almighty as an old man walking over the

earth, just after he had created it, with a bag of rocks upon his shoulders. These rocks he distributed in the various lands, thus forming the mountains. When he was passing over their country the bag suddenly tore open, and all that remained in it fell out, and hence the origin of the vast mountains of rock which they inhabit. Like a giant among the neighboring ranges, Montenegro rises far above them all. A wild, untamed race dwell among its cliffs; and there, secure from invasion, they have never been subdued by the Greek, Latin, or Ottoman forces. The Montenegrins are a section of the great Sclavic race which occupies more than half of the territory, and com• poses full half of the population of Europe.

In speaking of this people of Asiatic origin different authors do not always use the same terms, and hence we see in their works at times obscurity and even apparent contradictions. Without deciding upon the terms so variously used, we shall aim simply to be understood. In the "great emigration," perhaps in the time of Semiramis, a vast tribe of the Shemitic race left their homes in the East and settled in what is now the southern part of Russia in Europe. They were first known under the name of Scythians. With a system of government and social order essentially democratic, and a popular energy that has not been undermined by luxury, nor broken by long despotism, they are just beginning to be recognized as an important element in European politics, in which, for a long time, they have actually taken a prominent part. The most ancient record that is made of the Slaves as an independent people reaches back to the time of the Emperor Justinian. Theophilus, the preceptor of this prince, assures us that his pupil was of Sclavic origin. Indeed, the name of Justinian, and that of his ancestors, go to confirm this assertion. It is not, as Gibbon erroneously asserts, "of Gothic, or rather of English origin." Justinian was called among his own countrymen Upravda. The Sclavic word Pravda corresponds to the Latin word Jus, or Justitia. The letter U is only an aspirate prefix. Afterward, at one time joined with the Bulgarians, they threatened the existence of the Eastern Empire, and for thirty years contested the power of Basilius, the Bulgaricide; and again in the fourteenth century Stephanus, the emperor of Servia, went to attack Constantinople with an army of over eighty-five thousand

well-disciplined soldiers. Stephanus died of a fever in Thrace, and the enterprise failed. In the eastern and central parts of Europe other branches of the Sclavic race have acted important parts in history since the fifth century.

This great Scythian, or Sclavic race, may be considered as separated into four grand divisions, the Russian, the Polish, the Bohemian, and the Illyrian, (or Servian.) Their four languages have the same relation to their Sclavic origin as the modern Italian, French, Spanish, and Portuguese have to the Latin. The Russians have adopted a modification of the Cerillian, or Sacred Alphabet; the Bohemians, and the neighboring tribes in Prussia and Saxony, the German letters; while the Poles, and lately the Illyrians, use the Latin letters. As the Italian is more intimately allied to the parent Latin than its sister languages, so the Illyrian may be considered the representative branch of the ancient Sclavic. It is indeed termed the Sclavic by some native and most foreign writers. It is the mother tongue of most of the inhabitants of the southern part of the Austrian empire, and of the northern part of Turkey in Europe. The various dialects spoken in Illyria, Croatia, Sclavonia, Morlacca, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Servia, do not differ from each other more than do the dialects of the spoken language in the different provinces of Italy and Spain. So slight is the dif ference that the inhabitants of the various lands often designate by their own name the language of all the tribes. Compared to the others, the Illyric (Servian) is like the Tuscan to the Italian, or the Attic to the Greek. It is rich in words and phrases, full of elegance and euphony, of light and easy movement, yet nervous and dignified in expression beyond its Sclavic sisters. Hence the educated classes among them use the term Illyric generically, representing the whole. All the literature and school-books, periodicals and other printed matter, are published in this dialect. It will be the language of the Sclavic, or Illyric state that is either joined to Hungary or is to become a separate nation of itself, in the resurrection of the races that is now throwing so much confusion in the midst of European politics. The problem of the Orient can only be fully and finally settled on the basis of recognizing the Sclavic nationality.

The geographical position of these people has been a serious obstacle to their advancing in any of the elements of civiliza

tion. Their land has been the battle-field of nations and
religions. After a destructive war of one hundred and sixty-five
years they were conquered by the Romans. The barbarians
several times invaded their dominions. The Greek and Latin
Churches here met in conflict, not so much for this particular
region as to obtain control of the lands beyond. Here has
been the border ground where the Turks sought to gain an
entrance to the nations of Europe. That any literature should
be developed under such circumstances would be a matter of
great surprise. Yet we find at Ragusa, one of the chief mari-
time cities, an extensive library, and a university that ranked
as one of the best in Europe till the Avari rushed down upon
the city and burned the greater part of it, including the library
and the university. Ragusa has ever been, till very lately, the
chief seat of Sclavic learning. Zara, the capital of Dalmatia,
now claims that distinction. Several of the faculty of the
Gymnasium at Zara are deeply enlisted in the work of regen-
erating their native country. Professor Danillo is at the head
of an organization that is diffusing a large amount of informa-
tion and many stirring appeals to the liberal party. His feel-
ings are so deeply enlisted in the movement that he is almost
restless unless when engaged in it. The prudence, caution,
and bravery required of one in his position entitle him to more
than the honors of the battle-field. When we parted, after
some weeks spent with him, he shook the writer of this article
warmly by the hand, and, speaking of American liberty, he
said, "We too shall be free!"

Ragusa, however, retains much of her ancient prestige. To
one of its citizens, Marino Ghelaldi, is attributed the merit of
having first applied Algebra to Geometry, and the analysis of
curves. Spilla Betina, a mathematical experimenter and alche-
mist, worked many years in a neighboring eave. Among other
achievements he succeeded in setting fire to some small vessels
with reflectors, like Archimedes. The cave is to this day
termed the "Cave of the Magi." Several ancient writers on
medicine lived here, where observations on the symptoms and
treatment of diseases are still in good repute. Givichino Stulli
died in 1817, aged eighty-seven years, having devoted half a
century to writing and perfecting his "Illyrico-Latino-Italiano"
Dictionary, which he published in two octavo volumes. Affect-

ing indeed is the dedication by the good old man: “... At the age of eighty years, fifty of which I have spent amid long watchings, and expensive travels to enrich my new Dictionary, nothing do I now desire so much as to be able to publish it. There had not as yet appeared the least ray of hope that I should see accomplished this my chief desire All the circumstances of the times and the place seemed to oppose this great enterprise. And now you give me the inexpressible consolation of seeing accomplished, before I close this mortal life, this object toward which have been raised incessantly the chief desires of my heart." (Addressed to Marshal Marmont, of Ragusa, by whose aid the Dictionary was published.)

Another liberal-minded gentleman at Ragusa, some thirty years ago, gathered together an octavo volume of poems, written in Illyric by natives of that city, and also published an Italian translation of most of them. The subjects are various. A large number are lyrics of beautiful sentiment and fine expression. Many are love songs. In all there is nothing trivial, or scarcely anything mirthful. Occasionally the poet breaks out in the more dignified pentameter, and discourses at length of military prowess and heroic deeds of their ancestors. The movement is frequently stately, and some times quite grand. But these were never very widely circulated among the people. The circumstances were unfavorable. They were also written in Cerillian letters, and hence were illegible to the common people.

This Cerillian alphabet was invented by Cerillo, a native of Salona, who went as a missionary to the Sclavic tribes in the fourth century. Finding the people without a written language, he invented an alphabet-from the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages that represented all the many and peculiar sounds of the Sclavic tongue. It is called by Eichhorn the most perfect alphabet in existence. It contains forty-two letters. Cerillo translated part of the New Testament, and some of the works of the fathers of the Church. The alphabet is difficult to master, and its use is confined mostly to sacred books. There are in the Illyrian several vowel and consonant sounds that do not occur in the other European languages. Its structure is very philosophical. Thus, for twenty, they say two tens; thirty, three tens; and in many cases the system of its word-building