It is evidently disfigured by the adoption of
foreign words, and can preserve its beauty only by adhering to its own
national and inexhaustible sources. The Russian, having been in early
times successively subjected to the influence of the Scandinavian,
Mongolian, Tartar, and Polish languages, is in this respect to be
compared, in a certain measure, with the English, in which the ancient
British, the Latin, the Saxon, the Danish, and the French, amalgamated
in the same proportion as the ideas of these different nations were
adopted. Hence nothing that ever contributed to the singular
composition of this rich language, appears to be borrowed; but all
belongs to it as its lawful property. But the great pre-eminence of
the Russian appears in the _use_ which it made of these adopted
treasures. Its greater flexibility made it capable of employing
foreign words merely as _roots_, from which it raised stems and
branches by means of its own native resources. It is this copiousness
and variety of _radical_ syllables, which gives to the Russian in
certain respects a claim over all other Slavic languages.
Another excellence is the great freedom of construction which it
allows, without any danger of becoming unintelligible or even
ambiguous.
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