PREFACE


The present work is founded on an essay, which appeared in the
Biblical Repository for April and July, 1834, then conducted by the
undersigned. The essay was received with favour by the public; and
awakened an interest in many minds, as laying open a new field of
information, hitherto almost inaccessible to the English reader. A few
copies were printed separately for private distribution. Some of these
were sent to literary men in Europe; and several scholars of high name
among those acquainted with Slavic literature, expressed their
approval of the work. Since that time, and even of late, inquiries
have repeatedly been made, by scholars and by public libraries in
Europe, for copies of that little treatise; which, of course, it was
impossible to satisfy.

These circumstances, together with the fact, that in these years
public attention has been more prominently directed to the character
and prospects of the Slavic nations, have induced the author to recast
the work; and to lay it anew before the public, corrected, enlarged,
and continued to the present time; as a brief contribution to our
knowledge of the intellectual character and condition of those
nations, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

In its present shape, the work may be said to supply, in a certain