The ancient Illyricum comprised all the countries situated between the Adriatic and the Black Sea, and along the Danube and Save.[2] Towards the middle of the seventh century, we find this vast country mostly occupied by a Slavic people of one and the same race, alternately called Bulgarians, Croatians, and Servians. We find also six kingdoms gradually established by them: Bulgaria, Servia, Bosnia (Rama), Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia; some of them powerful and of great influence in their time, but now and long since sunk into ruin, and existing only as Turkish or Austrian provinces. An impenetrable night rests on the early history of these regions; and if the judicious criticism of modern philologists has thrown comparatively some light on this general topic, still, their investigations have been of little consequence for the history of the language. All that it concerns us to note here, is, that as early as the seventh century a part of these nations were already Christians, converted by Romish priests. Among the remainder, Christianity as taught by Greek missionaries found a welcome reception in the eighth and ninth centuries, and soon was fully established. The oriental Servians had the chief seat of their power in the present Turkish province of Serf-Vilayeti; and governed by princes called _Shupans_, we see them in a constant war of resistance against the Greek emperors, and during several centuries also against the powerful Khans of Bulgaria; now conquered, subjugated, destroyed almost to annihilation, but recovering with effort and rising again in power, with such energy as to enable them under the great Tzar, Stephan Dushan, not only to hold all their neighbours in awe, but to take a menacing position towards Byzantium itself, and dictate conditions of peace to the imploring envoys of that proud imperial court. But this brilliant point of Servian glory, which even now after five hundred years still lives in the hearts of the people, and is the subject of a thousand legends and songs, was only a meteor. It vanished in almost the same moment that it appeared. Stephan's immediate successors, enfeebled by their domestic dissensions, sunk under the superior forces of the Turks, who had broken into Europe thirty-four years earlier. They soon became the conquerors of the Servians, though not without fierce and bloody struggles; and they still remain their masters and oppressors.[3]