beginnings of history, are all there still, and two of them
keep their original tongues. They form three distinct nations. First
of all there are the Greeks. We have not here to deal with them as the
representatives of that branch of the Roman Empire which adopted their
speech, but simply as one of the original elements in the population of
the Eastern peninsula. Known almost down to our own day by their
historical name of Romans, they have now fallen back on the name of
Hellenes. And to that name they have a perfectly good claim. If the
modern Greeks are not all true Hellenes, they are an aggregate of
adopted Hellenes gathered round and assimilated to a true Hellenic
kernel. Here we see the oldest recorded inhabitants of a large part of
the land abiding, and abiding in a very different case from the
remnants of the Celt and the Iberian in Western Europe. The Greeks are
no survival of a nation; they are a true and living nation--a nation
whose importance is quite out of proportion to its extent in mere
numbers. They still abide, the predominant race in their own ancient
and again independent land, the predominant race in those provinces of
the continental Turkish dominion which formed part of their ancient
land, the predominant race through all the shores and islands of the
Aegean and of part of the Euxine also. In near neighborhood to the
Greeks still live another race of equal antiquity, the Skipetar or
Albanians. These, as I believe is no longer doubted, represent the
ancient Illyrians. The exact degree of their ethnical kindred with the
Greeks is a scientific question which need not here be considered; but
the facts that they are more largely intermingled with the Greeks than
any of the other neighboring nations, that they show a special power of
identifying themselves with the Greeks--a power, so to speak, of
becoming Greeks and making part of the artificial Greek nation, are
matters of practical history. It must never be forgotten that, among
the worthies of the Greek War of Independence, some of the noblest were
not of Hellenic but Albanian blood. The Orthodox Albanian easily turns
into a Greek; and the Mahometan Albanian is something which is broadly
distinguished from a Turk. He has, as he well may have, a strong
national feeling, and that national feeling has sometimes got the
better of religious divisions. If Albania is among the most backward
parts of the peninsula, still it is, by all account