In this manner he extended
his alphabet to forty-six characters or signs; some of them indeed
merely signs for expressing shades of pronunciation, which in other
languages are denoted by marks and points. Some others are not
pronounced at all, and seem, at least according to the present state
of the Slavic languages, utterly superfluous. Hence the Russians and
Servians have diminished the number of their letters considerably;
although the Russian has still some which could be amalgamated with
others, or entirely omitted. Whether the Old Slavic actually had, at
the time of Cyril's invention, so many different shades of sound, it
would be difficult to decide at present, after that language has
existed for so many centuries as a mere language of books.
Cyril, or, according to his baptismal name, Constantine, and Methodius
his brother, must be reckoned among the benefactors of mankind; for
it was they who procured for the Slavic nations, so early as the ninth
century, the inestimable privilege of reading the Holy Scriptures in a
language familiar to their ears and minds; whilst the sacred volume
yet remained, for centuries after, inaccessible to all the other
European Christians, the exclusive property of the priesthood.
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