Lushitze, Lusatia, Germ. Lausitz, signifies in Slavic, a low marshland.  This name was formerly applied only to the north-eastern part of this province, or Lower Lusatia, which is, or was at least at the time of the Vendish settlement, a country of that description.  At a later period, the name was carried over very improperly to the south-western part, or Upper Lusatia, a beautiful and mountainous region.  Lusatia was given by Henry I, as a fief, to the margrave of Meissen.  In the course of the following centuries, its two parts were repeatedly separated and reunited, alternately under the dominion of the last named margrave, of Poland, or of Bohemia, without however belonging to the German empire.  In the fourteenth century it was at length incorporated with Bohemia, and remained so for nearly three hundred years.  To this circumstance alone the partial preservation of the Vendish language is to be ascribed.  At the peace of Prague, A.D. 1636, it was allotted to Saxony.  At the congress of Vienna in 1815, it was assigned, with the exception of the smaller half of Upper Lusatia, to Prussia, to which monarchy it still belongs.

1. Language of the Sorabians in Upper Lusatia.

The cities of Bautzen, Zittau, Kamenz, Loebau, and their districts, form the Saxon part of Upper Lusatia.  Of its 195,000 inhabitants, about the fourth or fifth part still speak the Vendish language.  In the north-eastern part of Upper Lusatia, which belongs to Prussia, there is about the same proportion of Vendish inhabitants.  In both territories the whole number of Vendes is about 100,000.  Their language is very nearly related to the Bohemian; where the Sorabians of Lower Lusatia and the Poles pronounce the letter h, the Upper Lusatians and Bohemians give the sound of g.  Both Lusatian dialects have of course lost very many of their original peculiarities; thus both have adopted the article from the German language.

The Reformation exhibited here, as every where, its favourable influence on the vernacular language.  The bishops of Meissen, to whose diocese Lusatia belonged, had indeed repeatedly admonished the priests and curates, to whose care the spiritual welfare of the poor Slavic Lusatians was intrusted, to learn the language of the people; but no particular pains was taken; and the Romish clergy, who spoke of the natives with the utmost contempt, were quite satisfied to hear the people say Amen and Kyrie Eleison after their own Latin prayers.  As Lusatia lies near to the scene of Luther’s earliest influence, the Gospel was preached early to the Slavic inhabitants by some of his followers; and it had the natural consequence, that the Romish clergy also began to give some attention to the vernacular language.  In 1550, if not before, a Sorabian translation of the New Testament, the manuscript and perhaps the autograph of which is preserved in the library of Berlin, was completed; but it was never