e chemist bold enough to disengage them all?
There is, perhaps, no nation which has been exposed to more frequent
admixture of foreign blood, during the Middle Ages, than the Greeks.
Professor Fallmerayer maintained that the Hellenic population was entirely
exterminated, and that the people who at the present day call themselves
Greeks are really Slavonians. It would be difficult to refute him by
arguments drawn either from the physical or the moral characteristics of
the modern Greeks as compared with the many varieties of the Slavonic
stock. But the following extract from "Felton's Lectures on Greece,
Ancient and Modern," contains the only answer that can be given to such
charges, without point or purpose: "In one of the courses of lectures," he
says, "which I attended in the University of Athens, the Professor of
History, a very eloquent man as well as a somewhat fiery Greek, took this
subject up. His audience consisted of about two hundred young men from
every part of Greece. His indignant comments on the learned German, that
notorious {~GREEK CAPITAL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER LAMDA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~} or Greek-hater, as he stigmatized him, were received by
his hearers with a profound sensation. They sat with expanded nostrils and
flashing eyes--a splendid illustration of the old Hellenic spirit, roused
to fury by the charge of barbarian descent. 'It is true,' said the
eloquent professor, 'that the tide of barbaric invaders poured down like a
deluge upon Hellas, filling with its surging floods our beautiful plains,
our fertile valleys. The Greeks fled to their walled towns and mountain
fastnesses. By and by the water subsided and the soil of Hellas
reappeared. The former inhabitants descended from the mountains as the
tide receded, resumed their ancient lands and rebuilt their ruined
habitations, and, the reign of the barbarians over, Hellas was herself
again.' Three or four rounds of applause followed the close of the
lectures of Professor Manouses, in which I heartily joined. I could not
help thinking afterwards what a singular comment on the German
anti-Hellenic theory was presented by this scene,--a Greek professor in a
Greek university, lecturing to two hundred Greeks in the Greek language,
to prove that the Greeks were Greeks, and not Slavonians."(46)

An