Glasgow, my confidence, that in the mountains of Scotland, traces of glaciers must exist, and some days after I actually found, in company with my friend Dr. Buckland, the first moraines, in a valley on the eastern coast of Scotland. After having passed over all Scotland, I soon discovered from the position of the moraines, which existed in all the valleys, from the smooth surfaces of mural rocks and from the direction of the striæ especially, that through all the valleys of the chain of Ben Nevis, this mighty mountain-stock, in all directions, glaciers had pressed on to the plains, and extended down deep into the sea; for, as I said above, in many parts of the coast I could descry the polished faces and the scratches, far beneath the surface. What Scotland had exhibited, was not wanting in England and Ireland; and in Ireland especially, the wide extent of the polished surfaces in the plains greatly favored the view about the Swiss valley, and proved that the failure of the traces of glaciers, was owing not to the features of the country, but to the nature of its minerals. For in Ireland, where granite, gneiss and other hard minerals form the bottom of the plains to a great extent, these traces are still as apparent as anywhere in the mountains. On the contrary, in the same regions, and under the same apparent circumstances, they fail, wherever sand-stone prevails, whose composition does not favor their retention. It is manifest, how much even these glaciertraces in Ireland must favor a general pervasion of ice in our regions. Even the highest mountains of Ireland have scarcely a greater altitude above the level of the sea, than many plains of France, Germany and Russia!

Thus then, is one great whole more and more fashioned out of the isolated fragments, which individuals were able to collect, and new enlargements and enrichments are being constantly contributed to that already known. The ranks of opponents are becoming gradually thinned, whilst the number of those convinced by the facts, is daily multiplied. My view has come off victorious from the severe conflicts which it had to sustain in the circle of different societies, especially of the geological society at London; and the excellent labors of Buckland and Lyell on the glacier-tokens in Scotland and England, have since shown, that science still numbers many men who know how to sacrifice to truth, the views which they early adopted and promulgated, as soon as they are satisfied as to the correctness of the facts which oppose them. May the period be not far distant, when the geologists of Germany, casting aside preconceived opinions, and perhaps also personal considerations, shall devote their great powers to this question! For I am convinced, that most of the mountains of Germany will soon speak out for the truth of this great event in the physical world.

ARTICLE V.

THE SLAVI AND THEIR LITERATURE.

By Henry Dowoyna Kalussowski.

POLISH LITERATURE.

THE Social condition of the Poles before the establishment of Christianity among them, was similar to that of the Bohemians. They had also the same belief in a deity, whom they called the God of Thunder ;* but they considered him to possess two opposite qualities, to which they gave two different denominations, namely, that of Biały Bóg (or white god), the principle of good, and Czerny Bog (or black god), the principle of evil. Marzanna, Ziewonia, and a number of other mythic personages that figure in the Slavic pantheon, appear to have been the divinities of different localities, or elsewere borrowed from the Greeks and Romans, without much knowledge of their original attributes.

The art of agriculture was practised among them, and even carried to a considerable degree of perfection, before their adoption of Christianity, if we may rely on the testimony of the English monk, St. Boniface, as well as on that of Forster in his Entdeckungen in Norden. Notwithstanding the reproaches on the score of superstition which have been made against the Slavi of those times, the virtue of hospitality is generally acceded to them, for which we have no less an authority than that of Maurice, Emperor of Byzantium.†

Towards the close of the tenth century, Mieczyslaus placed Christianity upon the throne of Poland-a change for which probably more than one-half of the nation were already prepared, although there were some remote corners of the kingdom where the new religion long continued to be opposed, and finally triumphed only at the point of the sword; such were the provinces of Pomerania, the Prussias, &c. Some tribes even perished entirely, rather than submit to the propagating zeal of the German soldier-monks, summoned for this purpose about the year 1225, by Konrad, Prince of Masovia. That the Polish warriors and husbandmen did not immediately take an eminent rank in civilization will not appear surprising, if we consider the means at their command; but it is incontestable that immediately upon the adoption of Christianity, the kingdom became one of the most powerful of

* Unum enim Deum (says Procopius), fulgoris effectorem, Dominum hujus universitatis, solum agnoscunt.

He expresses himself concerning them in these terms: "Sunt quoque adversus peregrinos benigni, magnoque studio servant incolumes, salvosque de uno loco in alium deducunt, quo necesse habent, ut et si, per incuriam ejus qui servare talem debet, accidat ut damno peregrinus afficiatur, bellum ipsi inferat vicinus ejus, pietatem arbitratus, sic ulcisci peregrinum.'

Northern Europe. The Emperor Otho, under pretext of visiting the tomb of St. Albert the Martyr, came in person to Poland, in the year 1000, for the purpose of consolidating an alliance with Boleslaus the Great; and Otho's successor, Henry II, became convinced at Budyszyn (Bautzen) how dangerous it would be to alienate this powerful king, who was the first in Europe that dared to assume, in spite of popes and emperors, a title which at length none was hardy enough to refuse him.

The laws and institutions established by Boleslaus, although not very favorable to literary progress, (inasmuch as one of his decrees had for its object the destruction of all manuscripts, as calculated to detach his people from military pursuits,) demonstrate on the other hand the natural intelligence and docility of a people who could so perfectly adapt themselves to the great and wise measures then introduced. That which we shall call the first period of Polish history (to wit, from 980 to 1139) was occupied by conquests and the propagation of the Christian religion. Consequently tradition has preserved to us only the few ecclesiastical canticles already mentioned,* and some legal forms called customs (zwyczaje). Towards the end of this period, Poland first obtained an historian worthy of the name; this was Martin Gallus, so called from his birth-place and we may here observe that nearly all the clergy were either French, Italian, or Bohemian, there being but very few Germans amongst them. This epoch presents a curious phenomenon in the establishment of cities and the increase of their inhabitants, in consequence of the protection afforded them by a government, which seemed entirely absorbed in conquest, and in urging the people to the same pursuits. In the absence of all testimony to the contrary, are we not justified in supposing that this influx of strangers was owing to the superior social and intellectual progress which the country had already made under all its disadvantages? for although no literary work of this period has survived to our days, we are not thence to conclude that none was actually produced.

The period between 1139 and 1333 presents a continual and mortal conflict between two opposing principles both in politics and civilization, namely, that of aristocracy with absolute monarchy, and that of the spirit of nationality with the foreign tendencies caused by the immigration of multitudes of strangers that threatened its annihilation. Hence, although there are historical and legislative documents still extant, belonging to this epoch, the purely national progress is confined to the triumph of procuring that all sermons and other public discourses should be made in the vulgar tongue. The turbulent times during which the

* See Vol. ii., p. 571.

+ We think it necessary to mention here two names, the most celebrated in the history of our literature. The first is that of Archbishop Fulco, who, during his administration, among other ordinances decreed as follows: "Item statuimus, ut omnes ecclesiarum rectores seu plebani per universam diocesis Poloniæ gentis constituti, pro honore suarum ecclesiarum, et ad laudem dominicam, habeant scholas per licentiam do

throne of Poland passed from one branch to another of the same dynasty, were very prejudicial to the national language. About 1250, the secular clergy of Poland, in order to hinder the encroachments of the party to which they afterwards became attached, or to secure to themselves the affections of the mass of the people, did all in their power to cover it with abuse; and it was then the bishops ordained that the Latin text of all clerical lectures should be explained in the Polish tongue, and at the same time forbade the teaching of the German language in the parochial schools. From the same epoch is to be dated the social exclusion of the ancient Lechs, or aboriginal inhabitants of Poland, and also the dislike and contempt shown by the nobility for the citizen or burgher class, which extended to such a degree, that these latter, being treated as outcasts, never took a deep root in Poland, but lived in the country merely as sojourners for the sake of gain; becoming more and more regardless of the fate and fortunes of Poland, in proportion as their affections were alienated by persecution and the deprivation of their civil rights. This strikingly appears from the fact that the citizens of Cracow, Dantzic, Wilna, and Warsaw, who enjoyed privileges and immunities almost equal to those of the noblesse, have ever been distinguished for their patriotism, while the inhabitants of all the other cities and towns have shown the utmost indifference for everything Polish, and have either gradually disappeared among the other classes, or have contributed to swell the amount of emigration to foreign lands.

In the fourteenth century, when, as we have seen, literature was flourishing in Bohemia, Poland also presented the pleasing spectacle of a quickening intellectual cultivation. History was the principle object of attention among the literati of those times, and questions of legislation and government occupy a prominent place in their writings. Of polemical discussions there are no traces; for the Poles did not readily participate in the religious reforms which were then spreading over the rest of Europe. They indeed afforded protection to such as were persecuted in their own countries for opinion's sake, but they themselves were indifferent to dogmatic disputes, their attention being pre-occupied with questions of a purely political nature, that deeply affected their present condition. Thus they formally accorded their protection to the Jews and Gypsies in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries;* to the Hussites in the fifteenth; and in the sixteenth to the Lutherans, Calvinists, Socinians, &c.: but the Poles themselves took no part in the Reformation prior to the commencement of the sixteenth century It is difficult to assign positive reasons why this reform did not descend among the mass of the people, and why both Reformers and Catholics

minicam statutas, non ponant theutonicam gentem ad regendum ipsas, nisi in polonica lingua ad auctores exponendos in latinum polonice informati." The second is Archbishop Swinka, who renewed the same orders, and established the institution of parochial schools on a solid foundation, about the middle of the 13th century.

In the thirteenth century, the villages and cultivated lands in Poland were nearly all in the possession of the Jews.

seem to have co-operated to prevent the agricultural population from embracing the new doctrines. Is the reason to be sought in the tendency of the times, which caused all political rights to be absorbed by the magnates of the land, or in the want of union between the citizens and rural classes, or else in the intimate connection that existed between the clergy and the nobility? These, however, are questions of an historical character, and to the historian their elucidation must be left.

In 1347, was founded the University of Cracow. At first, various obstacles hindered its development; but at length, in 1364, the bull of Pope Urban V. gave it a new impulse, and the name of Jaroslaus Skotnicki appears as the protecting genius of this nursery of the arts. Among the contemporaries of Skotnicki was Spytek de Melsztyn, a man of grand conceptions, and the right hand of the reformer and legislator Casimir III.; it was he who drew up the code of laws, one of the most ancient in Europe, under the title of Statuta, sive Codex Terrestris, which was promulgated at Wislica, in 1348, before the assembled barons, seigneurs, and delegates of the people.

With Casimir the Great commences the third period of Polish history, (viz., from 1330 to 1650,) a period that was truly the age of gold both in politics and literature. The state of the bodily health of individuals, may always be known by the manner in which the several faculties perform their functions; in like manner, the rise, prosperity, and decay of a nation, are but symptoms of the internal condition of its population and government. At first, all its proceedings are untried and hazardous; but that Providence who covers with his hand the infancy of man, likewise watches over the tottering steps of new-born nations. Afterwards it becomes like an ardent youth, hardy, impetuous, irresistible-this is the epoch of conquest. In the maturity of its social development and vigor, its alliance is courted by surrounding nations, while it is enabled to extend the shield of its protecting power over the distressed and suffering, that flee to it from other and less favored lands; and now it sees its best and most glorious days. But this happy state must also sooner or later have an end; the progress of luxury and internal dissensions render it less and less capable of resist ing external attacks, and it gradually sinks into decrepitude and insignificance, although individual acts of self-sacrifice and heroism may from time to time interrupt for a while its downward career: its chief possessions of value then, are its history, its ancient traditions, and its literature, which oftentimes sends forth a gleam of expiring energy, rekindling the national ardor, and seeming to give promise of the return of happier days. Such was the condition of Poland, and such the aspect of its literature, from 1330 to 1770, and onwards.

This period of Polish history being but a succession of disasters, of Tatar invasions, and of encroachments of the Germans, under the names of Knights of the Cross or Hospitalers, on the rights and possessions of the Slavo-Russians, its melancholy details offer little of interest to the view, besides the disappearance of the Slavic language in the possessions yielded to the Teutonic knights, and the laying waste