ic evidences, succeeded, as
far as the layman is concerned, chiefly in adding to the confusion by
popularising prematurely facts whose signification was improperly
understood. The anthropologists of a more recent time, with their
study of skull-shapes and complexions, have sought to correct
misapprehensions; but the popular mind is still in a mist about the
whole matter. In the following essay Freeman brings his knowledge of
modern scientific results and his enormous historical information to
the rescue of the bewildered student, and does much to clear up the
perplexing relations of race with language, custom, and blood._

RACE AND LANGUAGE[1]

It is no very great time since the readers of the English newspapers
were, perhaps a little amused, perhaps a little startled, at the story
of a deputation of Hungarian students going to Constantinople to
present a sword of honor to an Ottoman general. The address and the
answer enlarged on the ancient kindred of Turks and Magyars, on the
long alienation of the dissevered kinsfolk, on the return of both in
these later times to a remembrance of the ancient kindred and to the
friendly feelings to which such kindred gave birth. The discourse has
a strange sound when we remember the reigns of Sigismund and
Wladislaus, when we think of the dark days of Nikopolis and Varna, when
we think of Huniades encamped at the foot of Haemus, and of Belgrade
beating back Mahomet the Conqueror from her gates. The Magyar and the
Ottoman embracing with the joy of reunited kinsfolk is a sight which
certainly no man would have looked forward to in the fourteenth or
fifteenth century. At an earlier time the ceremony might have seemed a
degree less wonderful. If a man whose ideas are drawn wholly from the
modern map should sit down to study the writings of Constantine
Porphyrogennetos, he would perhaps be startled at finding Turks and
Franks spoken of as neighbors, at finding _Turcia_ and _Francia_--we
must not translate _Tourchia_ and _Phraggia_ by Turkey and
France--spoken of as border-lands. A little study will perhaps show
him that the change lies almost wholly in the names and not in the
boundaries. The lands are there still, and the frontier between them
has shifted much less than one might have looked for in nine hundred
years. Nor has there been any great change in the population of the
two countries. The Turks and the Franks of the Imperial geographer are
there still, in the l