Page:The Position of the Slavonic Languages at the present day.djvu/36

 were the Old Bulgarian liturgy and the translations of the Scriptures, which were accepted simultaneously with conversion in the ninth century, and have held their own ever since. While enriching the country of its adoption with an immense vocabulary, the introduction of Old Bulgarian into Russia as the language of church and state has had a baneful effect on the history of the Russian language. For when once Old Bulgarian had secured the reputation for being the only language suitable for transmission to paper, it became an incubus of which it was almost impossible to get rid, and nothing was composed or transcribed purely in the vernacular till the end of the eighteenth century.

Together with the language of the Orthodox Church in use amongst the Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula around Byzantium, namely old Bulgarian, Russia accepted the Cyrillic alphabet in which that language was written. Like England, Russia still revels in an historical orthography. This orthography of the Russians, like our own, far from corresponds to the sounds of the language it is intended to represent, but will apparently continue, like that of the English, to be the source of consternation to others, but the cause of satisfaction to themselves.

The hour unfortunately forbids even a glance at the attractions of Russian literature; it has been the object rather to outline the fortunes of the Slavonic languages as a whole, than to depict the merits of any one of them in particular. To any one who doubts those of Russian, the greatest of these languages, it is only possible to repeat the words of Turgenev, written twenty-eight years ago, yet as big with meaning to-day as they were then:

'In the days of doubt, when my thoughts are heavily laden, thinking of the fate of my country, thou art alone my help and my support, O thou my language, grandiose and strong, untrammelled and unspoilt. Were it not for thee, how should I not fall into despair, at the sight of all that is being done at home? Yet I cannot believe, but that it is to a great people that such a language has been given.'