The Greeks are no
survival of a nation; they are a true and living nation, a nation whose
importance is quite out of its 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 AEgaean 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 accounts, the part where there is most hope of men of different
religions joining together against the common enemy.

Here then are two ancient races, the Greeks and another race, not indeed
so advanced, so important, or so widely spread, but a race which equally
keeps a real national being. There is also a third ancient race which
survives as a distinct people, though they have for ages adopted a
foreign language. These are the Vlachs or Roumans, the surviving
representatives of the great race, call it Thracian or any other, which
at the beginning of history held the great inland mass of the Eastern
peninsula, with the Illyrians to the west of them and the Greeks to the
south. Every one knows, that in the modern principality of Roumania and
in the adjoining parts of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, there is to be
seen that phenomenon so unique in the East, a people who not o