the Spree Wald. There the Wends (pronounce _Vends_) still maintain a
distinct and almost independent community, with peculiar manners, and,
it is believed, like the gypsies, an elected or hereditary king; and
where, and round Lüchow, in Hanover, the few remnants of this once
potent nation are awaiting their final and gradual absorption into the
surrounding German nations. Whenever, in the north of Germany, a
traveller meets with a place or district ending in _wits_, _itz_,
_pitz_, &c., wherever situate, or whatever language the inhabitants
speak, he may put it down as originally Wendish; and the multitude of
such terminations will show him how extensively this people was spread
over those countries. Itzenplitz, the name of a family once of great
consequence in the Mark of Brandenburg is ultra-Wendish. It will,
therefore, excite no wonder that we find, even in Tacitus, Veneti along
their coasts and Ptolemy, who wrote about a century and a half later
than Strabo or Livy, seems to have improved the terminology of the
ancients in the interval; for, speaking of the Sarmatian tribes, he
calls these Veneti [Greek: Ouenedai par holon ton Ouenedikon kolpon].
Here we find the truest guide for the pronunciation, or, rather, for the
undigammaising of the Latin _V_ and the Welsh _W_, as _Ouenetoi_, which
is proved in many distant and varying localities. St. Ouen, the Welsh
Owen and Evan, and the patron saint of Rouen, no doubt had his name (if
he ever existed at all) coined from the French Veneti of Armorica,
amongst which he lived; and when foreigners wish to render the English
name _Edward_ as spoken, they write _Edouard_ and Robert the Wizzard,
the Norman conqueror of Sicily and Apulia, has his name transformed, to
suit Italian ears, into _Guiscard_, and as William into _Gulielmi_.
Thus, therefore, the whole coast of Prussia, from Pomerania, as far,
perhaps, as known, and certainly all the present Prussia Proper, was the
_Sinus Venedicus_, Ptolemy's [Greek: kolpon]; and this was also Alfred's
Cwen-Sae, for the north. I admit that when Alfred follows Orosius, he