which they have elsewhere,
but in which nations do not even in the roughest way answer to
governments. We have only to go into the Eastern lands of Europe to
find a state of things in which the notion of nationality, as marked
out by language and national feeling, has altogether parted company
from the notion of political government. It must be remembered that
this state of things is not confined to the nations which are or have
lately been under the yoke of the Turk. It extends also to the nations
or fragments of nations which make up the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
In all the lands held by these two powers we come across phenomena of
geography, race, and language, which stand out in marked contrast with
anything to which we are used in western Europe. We may perhaps better
understand what these phenomena are if we suppose a state of things
which sounds absurd in the West, but which has its exact parallel in
many parts of the East. Let us suppose that in a journey through
England we came successively to districts, towns, or villages, where we
found, one after another, first, Britons speaking Welsh; then Romans
speaking Latin; then Saxons or Angles, speaking an older form of our
own tongue; then Scandinavians speaking Danish; then Normans speaking
Old-French; lastly, perhaps a settlement of Flemings, Huguenots, or
Palatines, still remaining a distinct people and speaking their own
tongue. Or let us suppose a journey through northern France, in which
we found at different stages, the original Gaul, the Roman, the Frank,
the Saxon of Bayeux, the Dane of Coutances, each remaining a distinct
people, each of them keeping the tongue which they first brought with
them into the land. Let us suppose further that, in many of these
cases, a religious distinction was added to a national distinction.
Let us conceive one village Roman Catholic, another Anglican, others
Non-conformist of various types, even if we do not call up any remnants
of the worshippers of Jupiter or of Woden. All this seems absurd in
any Western country, and absurd enough it is. But the absurdity of the
West is the living reality of the East. There we may still find all
the chief races which have ever occupied the country, still remaining
distinct, still keeping separate tongues, and those for the most part,
their own original tongues. Within the present and late European
dominions of the Turk, the original races, those whom we find there at
the first