obieski to Joseph II, which fixed the boundary which only yesterday
seemed eternal to diplomatists, but which now seems to have vanished.
The boundary has advanced and gone back over and over again. As Buda
once was Turkish, Belgrade has more than once been Austrian. The whole
of the southeastern lands, Austrian, Turkish, and independent, from the
Carpathian Mountains southward, present the same characteristic of
permanence and distinctness among the several races which occupy them.
The several races may lie, here in large continuous masses, there in
small detached settlements; but there they all are in their
distinctness. There is among them plenty of living and active national
feeling; but while in the West political arrangements for the most part
follow the great lines of national feeling, in the East the only way in
which national feeling can show itself is by protesting, whether in
arms or otherwise, against existing political arrangements. Save the
Magyars alone, the ruling race in the Hungarian kingdom, there is no
case in those lands in which the whole continuous territory inhabited
by speakers of the same tongue is placed under a separate national
government of its own. And, even in this case, the identity between
nation and government is imperfect in two ways. It is imperfect,
because, after all, though Hungary has a separate national government
in internal matters, yet it is not the Hungarian kingdom, but the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy of which it forms a part, which counts as a
power among the other powers of Europe. And the national character of
the Hungarian government is equally imperfect from the other side. It
is national as regards the Magyar; it is not national as regards the
Slave, the Saxon, and the Rouman. Since the liberation of part of
Bulgaria, no whole European nation is under the rule of the Turk. No
one nation of the southeast peninsula forms a single national
government. One fragment of a nation is free under a national
government, another fragment is ruled by civilized strangers, a third
is trampled down by barbarians. The existing States of Greece,
Roumania, and Servia are far from taking in the whole of the Greek,
Rouman, and Servian nations. In all these lands, Austrian, Turkish,
and independent, there is no difficulty in marking off the several
nations; only in no case do the nations answer to any existing
political power.

In all these cases, where nationality and governmen