atural friends and allies; it is only with
them that they will not lose their national individuality, because they
are their brothers, retarded in the history of humanity and of
civilization.

But if the idea of an independent and peculiar Albanian race and
nationality is shown to be false by ethnological research and by
historical documents, it is a still greater error and a ridiculous
pretension to say that the town of Jannina is the centre and the capital
of the Albanian idea and nationality. This argument, which for some time
past has been going the round of Europe, and which has found supporters
in Italy,--in the Italian Government unfortunately,--is truly pitiable,
and unworthy of being seriously debated, in the view of those who are at
all acquainted with the history of modern Greece. But since, in these
times of vain questions and useless and sophistical debates about the
peoples of the East, much has been written and argued on this question
in the European press, we think it may not be out of place to give some
information on the political and intellectual state of Jannina, its
population, and the historical and moral traditions of the town, which
was formerly, prior to the creation of the new kingdom, the intellectual
capital of Hellenism.

Jannina is, of all the districts of Epirus, that in which the Greek
population is the most numerous and the most compact. Out of 100,000
inhabitants of this district, there are only 5000 Mussulmans; and these
also are of Greek origin, because they all speak Greek. And in Turkey in
Europe, Jannina is the most Hellenic village, in which there is not one
inhabitant who does not speak the language of the country. It is,
perhaps, an historic curiosity, but still it is a fact which has already
been proved, that the Sublime Porte has no right of conquest over this
town, because Jannina has not been conquered by the Turks, but has only
recognized the Turkish rule by a treaty which guaranteed to it all the
rights of self-government--rights which were afterwards trampled under
foot in consequence of a rising in the unfortunate town. In the
seventeenth century, at the very dawn of the Hellenic revival, Jannina
was already a centre of light which illumined the dark sky of Hellenism;
for a long time this part of Epirus was the mother-country of the
greatest patriots, and the most earnest propagators of national
education. Athens was but a village, known only through history, when
this