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 BULGARIAN LANGUAGE BULGAEIN 423 pendent of Constantinople and Rome, and the other, supported by French influences, propos- ing a union with Rome. In March, 1861, a conclave was held by the Greek patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and An- tioch, and the bishops of the two parties were excommunicated. The party who favored a union with Rome sent an address to Pius IX. to that effect, and claimed to speak in the name of 400,000 Bulgarians. The pope appointed Sokolski archimandrite, who also received valu- able presents and a decree of investiture from the sultan. On June 18, 1861, Sokolski sud- denly disappeared with the decree. It was said that he had retired to a convent in Kiev, and afterward that he was dead. According to other (Roman Catholic) accounts, he was carried off by Russian emissaries. In 1872 the number of Catholic Bulgarians was estimated at only 4,000, with only one bishop, who had the title of apostolic administrator. In June, 1862, Prince Gortchakoff addressed a note to the diplomatic corps inviting the powers to unite with Russia to intervene in favor of the Christian subjects of Turkey. The Porte averted complications by making a temporary reform in Bulgaria. In the same year a con- siderable immigration of Tartars from the Cri- mea and the Kuban took place. Russia invited the Bulgarians to occupy the districts deserted by the emigrants. In 1865, in pursuance of the policy of decentralization, Bulgaria was erected into a vilayet or principality ; and in 1870 the religious demands of the Bulgarians were finally granted in a firman which pro- vided for a separate administration, to be called the exarchate of the Bulgarians. The exarchate was not, however, actually established until February, 1872, when the Bulgarian church council elected the metropolitan Anthimos of Widdin first exarch. In October, 1872, the entire exarchate was excommunicated by a general Greek synod at Constantinople. BULGARIAN LANGUAGE AND 1,1 IKIUTI III'. Bulgaria and the adjacent provinces of Mace- donia are considered to have been the cradle of the old Slavic languages. The ancient Bul- garian language was the richest of them all, and was the Scriptural language of the Greek- Slavic church, and the great medium of eccle- siastical literature in the ancient Slavic lands. After the overthrow of the Bulgarian kingdom at the close of the 14th century, the grammati- cal structure and purity of the language be- came impaired by admixture with the Walla- chian, Albanian, Rouman, Turco-Tartar, and Greek vernaculars. Turkish inflections are ap- pended to Slavic words ; but properly the mod- ern Bulgarian language has only the nomi- native and the vocative of the seven Slavic cases, all the rest being supplied by preposi- tions ; the inflection of the verb is in like man- ner imperfect. There is an article, which is put after the word it qualifies, like that of the Albanians and Wallachians. Among the ancient Bulgarian literature must be mentioned the translations of the Bible by Cyril and Metho- dius, and the writings of John of Bulgaria in the 10th century. The separation of the Bul- garian church from the Latin, and its union with the Greek, had no influence in creating a Bulgarian literature ; the clergy, then as now, procured their liturgies from Russia. The modern literature is very slender, consisting al- most entirely of a few elementary and religious books. Grammars of the Bulgarian language were published by Neofyt in 1835, and by Christaki in the following year. Venelin, a young Russian scholar sent to Bulgaria by the Russian archaaographical commission, published in 1837 a grammar and two volumes of a his- tory of the Bulgarians, but died while he was engaged in preparing a third volume. A new grammar was published by Bogoyev in 1845, and finally in 1849, by the Rev. E. Riggs, an American missionary stationed at Smyrna, who also sent a Bulgarian translation of Gallaudet's "Child's Book on the Soul" to New York. Dictionaries of the Bulgarian language have been prepared by Neofyt and Stojanowicz. A Bulgarian version of the New Testament was printed at Smyrna in 1840 for the British and foreign Bible society. The Bulgarian national songs are numerous, and are similar to those of the Servians. Celakovsky's collection of Slavic songs contains a number of Bulgarian songs. Bogoyev published twelve historical poems in 1845. There is as yet no place in Bulgaria where books are published. Works in the language are printed in Bucharest, Bel- grade, Buda, Cracow, Constantinople, Smyrna, and Odessa. BULGARIN, Thaddens (Polish, TADECSZ BUL- HAETN), a Russian author, born in Lithuania in 1789, died at Dorpat, Sept. 13, 1859. His father fought under Kosciuszko in the Po- lish war of independence, after the close of which his mother removed to St. Petersburg, where Thaddeus was educated at the military academy. In 1805 he took part in the war against France and Sweden, subsequently left the Russian service, fought under Napoleon, and after the emperor's downfall occupied himself with literary pursuits in Warsaw. After some time he returned to St. Petersburg and devoted himself to Russian literature. In 1823 he edit- ed the " Northern Archives," originally a his- torical and statistical journal, which he made popular in Russia by his humorous and satirical contributions. In 1825 he published in con- junction with his friend Gretch the " Northern Bee." He became also editor of the first Rus- sian theatrical almanac, called the "Russian Thalia." His complete works, published at St. Petersburg in 1827, and at Leipsic, in German, in 1828, include many of his fugitive essays, and his Spanish sketches, to which he added his Turkish sketches in a separate volume. In 1829 he made his debut as novelist with "Ivan Vuizhigin, or the Russian Gil Bias," of which " Peter Ivanovitch Vuizhigin" is the continua- tion. Subsequently he published three works