Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/170

 154 S L A S L E sometimes called Serbs and Sorbs. They are the remnants of the powerful tribes which once occupied nearly the whole of north Germany. The Lusatians in the earlier period of their history were under the dominion of the Poles and afterwards of the Chekhs. In the early part of the 17th century the bulk of them had been annexed" to the electorate of Saxony, with the exception of the small part about Kottbus, which had belonged to Brandenburg since 1445. In 1815, however, when the states of Europe were rearranged, in most instances with very small regard to the nationalities under their sway, many more of the Lusatians were handed over to Prassia ; and, according to the statistics of Boudilovich, at the present time (1886) all the Lower Lusatians, amounting to 40,000, belong to Prussia, as well as 44,000 of the Upper Lusatians. Besides the two dialects specified there are other minor ones, to judge from an article in the Bohemian Literary Journal ; but they are too minute to be specified here. The Upper Lusatian dialect shows most affinity with Chekh, especially in substituting h for g ; the Lower more resembles Polish, and has the strong or barred i, as in ios, "hair." The Upper dialect has been the most cultivated ; rome good gram- mars have been published by Seiler, Jordan, and Pfuhl, and there is a copious dictionary edited by Pfuhl in conjunction with others. The language is full of Germanisms and German words and cannot hold out long against the vigorous attempts at denationalization made by its Teutonic neighbours. There is a small Lower Lusatian dictionary by Zwahr, a posthumous work of very little merit. The Macica Serbska, the literary society of the Sorbs, founded on the model of the Bohemian Society in 1847, publishes its journal twice a year, which contains interesting articles on folk-tales and folk-lore generally, with popular songs taken down from the mouths of the people. Sorbish The first printed book in the Upper Sorbish language was the litera- little catechism of Luther, published in 1597 by the pastor Worjech. ture. This was not, however, the first time that any Lusatian or Sorbish words had been printed, for we find the names of plants in that language given in Franke's Hortus Lusatiaz, published in 1594. In 1706 Michael Brancel or Frencel published a translation of the New Testament into Sorbish ; a little before, in 1689, a grammar had appeared by Zacharias Bierling, entitled Didasccdia sen Ortho- graphia Vandalica. In 1693-96 Abraham Frencel, son of Michael, published a dictionary. In 1806 Mbhn translated some extracts from Klopstock's Messiah. From 1837 anew impulse was given to Sorbish literature : newspapers were printed in the language a:id useful books translated into it. One poet has appeared among them, Andrew Seiler, a clergyman, who died in 1872. Lower Sorbish has always been much less developed than Upper. The first book printed in it was a collection of hymns and a catechism, by Albin Moller, in 1574. Chojnan, a pastor in Lubin, wrote the first grammar between 1642 and 1664 ; in the latter half of the same century Kb'rner compiled a dictionary. At the commencement of the 18th century Bohumil (Gottlieb) Fabricius published his trans- lation of the New Testament (first edition in 1709) ; at the end of the same century a version of the Old Testament by Frico appeared. A good collection of Sorbish songs has been edited by Haupt and Schmaler. According to an interesting article by Hornik in the second volume of the Slavianski Sbornik, a number of these Wends emigrated to America and settled in Bastrop county, Texas, where they have divine service performed in their own language, and publish some newspapers. PolaUsh. Of the Slavonic languages spoken in the north ofPolabish. Germany the Lusatian Wendish and Kashoubish are alone living. Of those which are extinct Polabish is the only one of which any memorials have come down to us, and these are but scanty. The language affords a parallel to Cornish, not only in the few fragments which remain, but also in the date of its decline and extinction. It is considered by Sthleicher, 1 who has written an excellent grammar by piecing the scanty materials together, just as geologists restore an ichthyosaurus, to have more affinity to Polish than to Chekh, owing to the possession of nasals. This interesting language 2 ex- pired in the first quarter of the 18th century in the eastern corner of the former kingdom of Hanover, principally in the circuit of Liichow, which even at the present time is called Wendland. Between 1691 and 1786 certain vocabularies and dialogues in this language (including also a song) were taken down, and from them Schleicher has taken the materials for his grammar and the valu- able little dictionary appended to it. Dr Pfuhl printed these memorials in their entirety in 1863-64. The spelling is altogether phonetic, and, owing to the ignorance of the Slavonic peasant and his German interrogators, the former of German and the latter of Slavonic, there are some ludicrous blunders. The two most im- portant of these documents are a German -Wendish dictionary, compiled at the end of the 17th century by Christopher Henning, by birth a Lusatian, and pastor of Wustrow near Liichow. Divine service is said to have been held in that town in Wendish as late as 1751. Secondly, we have the Slavonic words and dialogues col- lected by a farmer named Johann Parum-Schultz. His manuscript is still in the possession of his descendants. There is a valuable monograph on the dialect of the Liineburg Slavs by Biskupski. In the 15th century Slavonic had ceased to be spoken in the island of Riigen, and in the same century it could only be heard from peasants in the market-place of Leipsic, a town (as already stated) with a Slavonic name. What the Slavs, however, have lost in the West they have partly gained in the East, and few languages have a more magnificent prospect than Russian, the dignity and strength of which fit it to be the tongue of an imperial people. (W. R. M. ) SLAVYANSK, a town of Russia, in the government of Kharkoff, situated 158 miles by rail to the south-east of the town of Kharkoff, on the Torets river and close by several salt lakes. From these salt is extracted to the annual value of more than 10,000; there are also several tallow-works in the place. The Stavyansk merchants carry on a brisk trade in salt, cattle, and tallow. The population (11,650 in 1870) reached 15,400 in 1883. The ancient name of Stavyansk was Tor. The town, which is supposed to occupy the site of a former settlement of the Torks (Turks) who inhabited the steppes of the Don, was founded in 1676 by the Russians to protect the salt marshes. Having an open steppe behind it, this fort was often destroyed by the Tatars. Its salt trade became insignificant in the 18th century and has only revived during the last twenty years since coal was brought from Ekaterinoslaff. SLEEP is a normal condition of the body, occurring periodically, in which there is a greater or less degree of unconsciousness due to inactivity of the nervous system and more especially of the brain and spinal cord. It may be regarded as the condition of rest of the nervous system during which there is a renewal of the energy that has been expended in the hours of wakefulness. For in the nervous system the general law holds good that periods of physio- logical rest must alternate with periods of physiological activity, and, as the nervous system is the dominating mechanism in the body, when it reposes, all the other systems enjoy the same condition to a greater or less extent. Rest alternates with work in all vital phenomena. After a muscle has contracted frequently at short intervals, a period of relaxation is necessary for the removal of waste products and the restitution of energy ; the pulsating heart, apparently working without intermission, is in reality not doing so, as there are short intervals of relaxation between individual beats in which there is no expenditure of energy ; the cells in a secreting gland do not always elaborate, but have periods when the protoplasm is comparatively at rest. Nervous action also involves physico-chemical changes of matter and the expenditure of energy. This is true even of the activity of the brain associated with sensation, per- ception, emotion, volition, and other psychical phenomena, and therefore the higher nervous centres require rest, during which they are protected from the stream of impressions flowing in from the sense-organs, and in which waste matters are removed and the cerebral material is recuperated for another time of wakeful activity. The coincidence of the time of sleep with the occurrence Time of of the great terrestrial phenomena that cause night is more sleep, apparent than real. The oscillations of vital activity are not correlated to the terrestrial revolutions as effect and cause, but the occurrence of sleep, in the majority of cases, on the advent of night is largely the result of habit. Whilst the darkness and stillness of night are favourable to sleep, the state of physiological repose is determined more by the condition of the body itself. Fatigue will normally cause sleep at any time of the twenty-four hours. Thus many of the lower animals habitually sleep during 1 Laut- und Formen-Lere der Polabischen S^yrache, St Petersburg, 1871. 2 To avoid confusion it must be remembered that the word " Pola- bish " is used somewhat carelessly by ethnologists to denote (1) the Slavonic tribes in north Germany generally, (2) the particular Slav- onic tribe on the Elbe (Slav. Laba).