'To where the Mysians prove their martial force, And hardy Thracians tame the savage horse; And where the far-famed Hippomolgian strays, Renown'd for justice and for length of days; Thrice happy race!' ILIAD, B. XIII., v. 1, p. 13. They are afterward spoken of by Herodotus, and subsequently by Procopius, from the latter of which we have quoted. As a nation, the Thracians have long been extinct. Even of their language there remains no vestige, except what is seen in the Teutonic languages at the North; those of the South, of Pelargic origin, are by some philologists derived from the Thracian, inasmuch as the affinities of the languages of the north and south of Europe are sufficient to deduce them from some earlier language, all traces of which are extinct. This subject might be carried much farther, by tracing the analogies of language which exist between the German and Sanscrit, or between the English and Sanscrit, and of the affinity between the Persian and the two European languages named. They are all so striking as to place it beyond a doubt that some connexion existed at a very remote period of antiquity, between the people by whom these languages are spoken. On this point, the great philologist Adelung observes, that it has excited the greatest wonder and astonishment. 'The fact is undeniable; and the German found in Persian consists not only of a remarkable number of radical words, but also in particles, and is even observable in the grammatical structure. This circumstance will admit of two explanations, either from a later intermingling of the two languages, after they were completely formed, or from their both being derived from the same mother tongue.'[6] Having thus traced the Scandinavians to the Thracians, which latter people, from their proximity to Asia, must have preserved parts of their mother tongue, particularly if that was the Persian or Zend, and noticed the remarkable affinity existing, even in our day, in the languages of Teutonic people (of which the Scandinavians are one) and the Persian, the antiquity of the former, and their descent from one of the original nations of Asia, will be sufficiently apparent, to take up the subject which heads this article.