ry from elsewhere; and the theory of a Graeco-Italic
period, in which the future inhabitants of Greece and Italy lived
together somewhere to the north of both these countries and made
common advances in civilisation, is now abandoned. There are,
however, faint indications that the Greeks spread over their country
from the north southwards. What people dwelt in it before them it is
impossible to say; the Pelasgi and Leleges, whom they themselves
conceived to have preceded them, left behind them no other trace than
that belief. When first we descry this land in the faint dawn of
history, it is tenanted by the people whose name it bears, touched
only by the Thracians to the north, and the Illyrians to the west,
these also being Aryan races. Though the Greeks are on both sides of
the Egean, which seems from the earliest times to have connected
rather than divided them, their centre of gravity is in the mainland
of Hellas, including the Peloponnesus. In this country many a
migration no doubt took place before the people was finally arranged
in it; and some of these migrations are faintly known to history.
When once the settlement had been accomplished, the nature of the
country did much to fix the institutions of the people and the mutual
relations of their various communities. Large tribes coming into the
narrow valleys and sequestered coasts of Greece necessarily broke up
into small cantons, each of which, though not cut off from
intercourse with its neighbours, was free to develop by itself. The
country is said by travellers to be the most beautiful in the world.
The branch of the Aryans which settled in it may have brought scanty
acquirements with them, but they brought great capacities. The Greeks
had an unrivalled talent for doing what they saw others do, in a much
better way, and so making it their own. They had an inborn
disposition to what is reasonable. That they had a deep-seated
inclination to what is harmonious and beautiful is proved by their
first great work of art, their language. Of that language there were
several dialects in the earliest times; the principal ones being the
broad Doric of the peninsula and the colonies, and the softer Ionic
of which the classical language is a branch. But the Greeks of all
dialects could understand each other, and regarded as barbarians
those without who spoke other tongues. Thus from the first this
people was much divided, but was also held together by strong bonds.

Earl