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A great part of the Slavic possessions gained in the last two partitions of Poland had been lost, but as an indemnity Prussia had received half of the kingdom of Saxony, in the very center of Germany, and also the Rhine provinces, where the people were thoroughly imbued with the revolutionary doctrines that had prevailed in France.
From that time on, the western powers had always to consider the vast Slavic empire in all their great struggles. They had also to consider a new kingdom in northern Germany, which was just growing into a great power as Peter began his work. This was Prussia, whose beginnings we must now consider.
+950+. The differentiation in the theistic scheme of the Teutons, especially the Scandinavians, is noteworthy. A comparison between the Teutonic figures and the Celtic and Slavic would be pertinent if we knew more of the character of these last; but the information about them is slight.
The antithesis of a good and evil principle is met with among most of the Slavic tribes; and even at the present time, in some of their dialects, everything good and beautiful is to them synonymous with the purity of the white color; they call the good spirit the White God, and the evil spirit the Black God.
Next came the Slavic tribes who are the ancestors of the modern Serbs. Following these, came a large tribe which did not belong to the Indo-European family, but was distantly related to the Finns and the Turks. These people were called the Volgars, for they came from the country around the River Volga. Before long, we find them called the Bulgars.
The Polish language is the only existing representative of that variety of idioms originally spoken by the Slavic tribes, which, under the name of Lekhes, in the sixth or seventh century, settled on the banks of the Vistula and Varta.
Following the division of the Slavic nations into the eastern and western stems, their languages may he divided into two classes, the first containing the Russian and the Servian idioms, the second embracing the Bohemian and the Polish varieties. The Slavi of the Greek faith use the Cyrillic alphabet, so called from St.
Lyrism is the keynote of the work, a passionate lyrism, with a note of self-absorption, suppressed feeling truly Slavic, this shyness! and a concentration that is remarkable even for Chopin. The narrative tone is missing after the first page, a rather moody and melancholic pondering usurping its place.
Yet these hatreds, these fears, and ambitions, inherited and carefully nourished, are just as real particularly in little states like these as the fact, odd and apparently unreasonable as it may be, that in a bit of country, which might be included in one of our larger States, one lot of people should speak French and think like Latins, and another speak Slavic and think another way, and that neither wants to be absorbed by the other any more than we want to be compelled to speak Spanish or be absorbed by the Mexicans.
In the latter half of the eleventh century the Slavic nations were already in possession of the whole extent of territory which they still occupy, from the Arctic Ocean on the north to the Black and Adriatic seas on the south, and from Kamtschatka and the Russian islands of the Pacific to the Baltic, and along the banks of the rivers Elbe, Muhr, and Ruab, again to the Adriatic.
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