His descendants are the present dukes of Mecklenburg; and it is a
memorable fact, that these princes are at the present day the only
sovereigns in Europe of the Slavic race. German priests and German
colonists introduced the German language; although we find that Bruno,
the chief missionary among the Obotrites, preached before them in
their own language. The Slavic dialect spoken by them expired
gradually; and probably without ever having been reduced to writing,
except for the sake of curiosity when very near its extinction. The
only documents of it, which have come down to us, are a few incomplete
vocabularies, compiled among the Polabae and Linones, i.e. the
inhabitants adjacent to the Elbe, in Slavic _Labe_, and to the Leine,
in Slavic _Linac_.
Long after the whole region was perfectly Germanized, a few towns in
the eastern corner of the present kingdom of Hanover, were still
almost exclusively inhabited by a people of Slavic race, who in the
seventeenth century, and even to the middle of the eighteenth, had
preserved in some measure their language and habits. But, since the
Germans were strongly prejudiced against the Vendish name,--the
nations of this race, especially those in the western part of the
German territories, being despised as subjugated tribes, and inferior
in general knowledge and information,--they gradually renounced their
national peculiarities.
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