Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic - Nations by Therese Albertine Louise von Jacob Robinson
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page 25 of 500 (05%)
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Russian provinces, which were formerly called White Russia, Black
Russia, and Red Russia, and were conquered by the Poles in former times, the peasantry are Russians and Russniaks; in Lithuania, they are Lithuanians or Lettones, a race of a different family of nations. In all these countries, only the nobility and inhabitants of the cities are really Poles, or Slavi of the Leckian race. To the same race belongs also the Polish population of Silesia, and an isolated tribe in the Prussian province of Pomerania, called the Kassubes. The Slavi of the Leckian race hardly amount to the number of ten millions; all Catholics, with the exception of about half a million of Protestants. II. SORABIAN-VENDISH BRANCH. There are remnants of the old Sorabæ; and several other Slavic races in Lusatia and some parts of Brandenburg. Their number is less than 2,000,000; divided between Protestants and Catholics. There is no doubt, that besides the races here enumerated, there are Slavic tribes scattered through Germany, Transylvania, Moldavia, and Walachia, nay, through the whole of Turkey. Thus, for instance, the Tchaconic dialect, spoken in the eastern part of ancient Sparta and unintelligible to the other Greeks, has been proved by one of the most distinguished philologists to have been of Slavic origin.[12] But to ascertain their number, at any rate very small, would be a matter of impossibility, and in every respect of little consequence. We thus distinguish among the nations of the Slavic race two great families, the connection of whose members among each other is entirely |
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