Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 132.djvu/376

370 the relation between the present and the past — even the very remote past — is much closer than this; we may say with truth that the past and the present are in being side by side; we may say that several different centuries are in those lands really contemporary. This last fact in truth presents one of the great political difficulties of the country. In a newly emancipated State, say the kingdom of Greece or any other, some part of its areas, some classes of its people, will really belong to the nineteenth century, while other parts, other classes, will practically belong to the fourteenth or some earlier century. Now a country which has reached, say the level of England in the fourteenth century, if it stands by itself, out of sight, so to speak, of the nineteenth century, may, if it has inborn life and a spirit of progress, develop in a steady and wholesome way from the starting-point of the fourteenth century. But if the land is placed, so to speak, within sight of the nineteenth century; if, while the mass belongs to the fourteenth century, it contains parts or classes which really belong to the nineteenth, the danger is that its development will not take this steady and wholesome course. The danger, like all other dangers, may doubtless be grappled with, and perhaps overcome; but it is a real danger which has its root in the history of those lands. One set of circumstances has caused them to lag behind the civilization of the West. Another set of circumstances has put the civilization of the West in their full view. Now an outward varnish of modern civilization may easily be put on. The Turk himself can do that. To attain the substance of such civilization must be the work of time, of trouble, perhaps of difficulties and struggles. In such a state of things, the temptation to grasp what is easiest, to think more of the outside than of the substance, is great and dangerous. And these dangers and difficulties must always be borne in mind in judging the amount of progress which has been made by any emancipated Eastern people. Their progress is likely to be real and lasting in exactly the proportion by which it is native, and is not a mere imitation of the manners and institutions of other countries. But the temptation to imitate the manners and customs of other countries is in such a case so strong that it must always be borne in mind in passing any judgment on the condition of Greece, Servia, Roumania, or any other State which may arise in those parts. In estimating their progress, we must, in fairness as well as in charity, bear in mind the special difficulties under which their progress has to be made.

This is a line of thought which might well be carried out at much greater length. But for my present purpose it comes in only incidentally. The hints which I have just thrown out show the way in which what I have ventured to call the co-existence of the present and the past in these lands has worked on their political and social state and prospects. My immediate business in the present paper is different. It is to show another result of the working of the same cause with regard to the land itself and its inhabitants, rather than with regard to the political and social development of its inhabitants. I wish now to speak on some features in the political geography of the country and in the distribution of its inhabitants, and to point out the bearing of those features upon the great questions of the present moment. Here at least questions of this sort cannot be set aside as mere "antiquarian rubbish." They are the very life of the whole matter.

One main feature of the south-eastern lands is the way in which all the races which have at any time really settled in the country, as distinguished from those which have simply marched through it, still remain side by side. In many cases they remain as distinct as when they first settled there. This is altogether contrary to our general experience in the West. In the West national assimilation has been the rule. That is to say, in any of the great divisions of western Europe, though the land may have been settled and conquered over and over again, yet the mass of the people of the land have been drawn to some one national type. Either some one among the races inhabiting the land has taught the others to put on its likeness, or else a new national type has been formed drawing elements from several of those races. Thus the modern Frenchman may be defined as produced by the union of blood which is mainly Celtic with a speech which is mainly Latin, and with a historical polity which is mainly Teutonic. Within modern France this one national type has so far assimilated all others as to make everything else merely exceptional. The Fleming of one corner, the Basque of another, even the far more important Breton of a third corner, have all in this way become mere exceptions to the general type of the country. If we pass into our own islands, 