Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 8.djvu/732

Rh 702 EUROPE pally situated within an area of rudely elliptical form, with its two foci represented by Bautzen and Kottbus. Since 1849 their numbers have diminished by upwards of 4200. The language shows two distinct varieties. 1 The Lettic branch though decadent is interesting as linguistically the oldest of the Aryan languages in Europe. The Lithuanians werein the Middle Ages one of the most powerful peoples of the Bal tic region, but fell into a secondary place by the incorporation of their country with Poland in 1386. Their language is still retained by about 150,000 or 200,000 people in Germany, and by about 1,434,750 in Russia, where those of the western part of the govern ment of Kovno and the northern part of the government of Suwalki are known as Shomudes or Samogitians. Two dialects are recognized the High or Southern, and the Low or Northern. The Letts still number more than 1,000,000, situated. in Courland, Livonia, and Vitebsk. Old Prussian, extinct two hundred years ago, was very similar to Lithuanian. With regard to the two languages marked in the table as &quot; unattached,&quot; almost nothing is known of Old Dacian, and the history of Albanian is but partially elucidated. The Skipitars, Arnauts, or Albanians are one of the most remarkable peoples of south-eastern Europe. They not only occupy Albania proper, but also appear in considerable numbers throughout the rest of European Turkey and Greece, forming, it is calculated, a total of 1,500,000. The colonies which settled in Italy and Sicily, though amounting to nearly 90,000, have given up their native language. Halm, who was the first to make a thorough investigation of the sub ject, distinguishes two dialects -the Toskan and the Gegian, which are as distinct as High German and Platt-Deutsch. Besides the Greek alphabet another of dubious origin is also employed. 2 The Semitic languages are mere exotics in modern Europe. Hebrew, the most widely distributed, is little more than the ecclesiastical language of the Jews, who for the most part employ the common language of the country in which they reside not only in public intercourse hut also in private^. At the same time it ia regularly taught in their schools, furnishes them with a number of familiar evcry-day expressions, and is not only the language of the professional literature of theologians, but appears in frequent quotations in their popular periodicals. Arabic, at one time the dominant language not only of southern Spain but of Sicily and part of Italy, is nowhere the usual speech of any European com munity ; but it is familiar to the educated classes of Turkey. Maltese can still be recognized as of Arabic derivation, but has in corporated a vast mass of foreign words. Mosarabic has been ex tinct at least since the 18th century: the liturgical service in the cathedral of Toledo, which still bears the name, is performed in Latin. The most important of the Finno-Tataric languages are the Turkish, the Hungarian, and the Finnish. The first varies greatly in its vocabulary in different places and grades of society ; and the official form is largely composed of Arabic words. A? a popular speech in Europe it has a very limited and discontinuous area. Hungarian, on the other hand, has maintained or recovered a remark able degree of hornogeneousness, and occupies on the whole a very compact territory in spite of the intrusion of German ; while its literature ranks as one of the most vigorous of the secondary litera tures of Europe. Finnish proper is spoken by 1,710,274 people in the Russian empire (of whom 1,615,613 are in the duchy of Finland), and by 14,930 in Sweden and 7637 in Norway; while the closely cognate Karelian numbers 303, 277 in Russia. The Tchudes, Vepses, and Votes, who amount to 48,000 in all, live in the governments of Olonetz, Vologda, Novgorod, and St Petersburg, in the neighbour hood of Lakes Ladoga and Onega. Their languages or dialects are very similar to Esthonian, which, with the exception of Hungarian, ranks as the most literary member of the group, and is spoken by upwards of 749,000 people. Livonian lingers as the speech of a few thousand seafaring folk in Courland. The Lapps contribute 17,178 to the population of Norway, 6700 to that of Sweden, and 7497 to that of Russia. Their language is divided into four dialects. The Tcheremisscs, Mordwines, and Votiaks are grouped together as Finns of the Volga, the first, to the number of about 260,000, situated in the country between the rivers Viatka and Vetluga; the second baing scattered, to th.3 number of about 792,000, through the governments of Samara, Saratoff, Simbirsk, Pensa, Nizhni- Novgorod, Tamboff, Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg, and Astrakhan; and the third, about 240,500 strong, occupying the western half of the government of Viatka. Another group is composed of the Permians, Suyenians, and Voguls. The two former were at one time one people, and had considerable fame in the Middle Ages for their com mercial activity ; they are now mere hunters, fishers, and pedlars, anl number respectively about 67,000 and 85,400 people in Perm, Vologda, and Archangel. The Voguls are a little colony from Asia, 2000 strong, in the government of Perm. The total number 1 See &quot; Das Sprachgebiet der Lausitzer Wenden vom 16 Jahrhundert his zur Gegenwart,&quot; by Dr Audree, in Petermann s MiU/ieilungen, 1873. -* 1 See Halm, Albanesische Siudien, Jeiia, 1854. of Tatars in Russia is said to be 1,212,610. They are found in all the sixty-one governments, with the exception of nine; but are most numerous in Kazan, Simbirsk, Ufa, and Viatka. They are closely connected with the Bashkirs of Ufa, Orenburg, Perm, and Viatka, who altogether amount to 757,000. The Nogaians, who live in the neighbourhood of the Sea of Azoff, are a mixed people, con taining remnants of the Khazars, Petchenegs, and Cumanians; the Tchuvashes are a Tatarized branch of the Finns of the Volga ; and the Meshtcheryaks of Ufa, Orenburg, Pensa, and Kazan are also of Finnish descent. The first still number 15,000, j though a large number emigrated to Turkey after the Crimean war, the second 569,000, the third 136,000. The language of the Nogaians is the same with that of the Tatars proper, and that of the Tchuvashes seems to lie midway between Nogairic and Turkish. The Kirghiz, of whom there are 156,000 in Astrakhan and Oren burg,- speak a dialect which is equally difficult of comprehension to the Tatar of Kazan and the Bashkir ; and the Calmucks 107,000 in Astrakhan are still more widely separated by language from their nearest kin. 3 Basque, which is spoken in the Pyrenean districts of France and Spain, is an agglutinative language, but cannot be classified. It is dying out more rapidly in the Spanish than in the French territory. 4 In 1877, as appears by the table on page 703, the P! European territory was distributed among 18 distinct**&quot; political totalities (exclusive of the petty states of San Marino, Andorra, Monaco, and Luxembourg), viz. tha German empire, the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, the united monarchy of Austria-Hungary, the united king dom of Great Britain and Ireland, the republic of France, the kingdoms of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the kingdoms of Belgium and of the Netherlands, the kingdom of Den mark, the united monarchy of Norway and Sweden, tho kingdom of Greece, the republican confederation of Switzer land, and the principalities of Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania. Several of these consist of a greater or smaller number of partially independent states connected with each other according to very different degrees of political copart- nery. The German empire, as one of the most recent as well as most extensive, naturally presents an unusual num ber of anomalies. Founded April 16, 1871, it comprises no fewer than twenty-six states under the presidency of the kingdom of Prussia, and these states are very dissimilar in size, constitution, rank, and general importance. Four, including Prussia, are kingdoms, six are grand-duchies, five are duchies, seven are principalities, and three are free cities. The organization by which they are united consists mainly of a federal council or Bundesrath, in which the individual states are represented by the nominees of their several governments, and a Reichstag, or Imperial Diet, the members of which are elected by universal suffrage. All military power is centralized in the hands of the emperor : his consent is necessary for all important appointments in the different divisions of the army, and he can command the erection of fortresses on the soil of any of the states, and if occasion requires can declare any part in a condition of siege. The practical dominancy of Prussia is further secured by the fact that it possesses 236 of the 397 mem bers who compose the Imperial Diet. As separate states, Prussia, Wiirtemberg, Saxony, and Bavaria are all consti tutional monarchies, each with its parliament or Lands- tag, consisting of an upper and a lower house. The various grand-duchies, duchies, and principalities have their several Stande, or states, some consisting of two chambers and some of one, and presenting considerable variety in the amount of representation accorded to different elements of the community, in the rules of election, and in the length of period for which it is valid. That unusual combination of geographical names, Austria -Hungary, and its equally unusual adjective Austrian-Hungarian, which are so uncouth and bewildering to the ordinary reader, are an attempt to indi- 3 See &quot;Die Volker Eusslands,&quot; in Petermann s Mitthettungen, 1877, and Wallace s Russia, 1877. 4 See Broca s collected papers on Ethnology,