of their cabins.

SERBIAN.

The popular poetry of the Slavic race, which still survives, is found
in its perfection among the Serbians and Dalmatians, while it is almost
extinct among the other nations. It is of unknown antiquity, and has
been handed down from one century to another.

The Slavs have always been a singing race, and must have been so from
Pagan times, as their songs abound with heathen gods and customs,
dreams, omens, and a true Eastern fatalism. Love and heroism are the
usual themes, and among the Serbians the peculiar relation of sister
and brother forms the principal subject of interest.

A Serbian woman who has no brother is considered a fit subject for
sympathy. The Serbian poetry is nearly all Epic, and in this particular
class of verse no modern nation has been so productive. There is a
grand and heroic simplicity in their song, as it recounts their daily
life; the hall where the women sit spinning near the fire, the
windswept mountain side, where the boys are pasturing their flocks, the
village square where youths and maidens dance, the country ripe for the
harvest, and the forest through which the traveller journeys, all
reecho with song. This Serbian poetry first became generally known in
Europe through Goethe and Grimm in Germany, and Bowring and Lytton in
England.

FINNISH.

The Finnish race reached a high degree of civilization at a very early
period. They have always been distinguished by a love of poetry,
especially for the elegy, and they abound in tales, legends and
proverbs. Until the middle of the twelfth century they had their own
independent kings, since then they have been alternately conquered by
the Russians and Swedes; but like the Poles, they have preserved a
strong national feeling, and have kept their native language. Their
greatest literary monument is the Kalevala, an epic poem. Elias
Lonnrot, its compiler, wandered from place to place in the remote and
isolated country in Finland, lived with the peasants, and took from
them their popular songs, then he wrote the Kalevala, which bears a
strong resemblance to Hiawatha. Max Muller says that this poem deserves
to be classed as the fifth National Epic in the world, and to rank with
the Mahabharata and the Nibelungen-lied. The songs are doubtlessly the
work of different minds in the earliest ages of the nation.

HUNGARIAN.

The Magyars, or Hungarians as they are called, came into Europe from
Asia, and first