the region lying to the eastward of the Ionian Sea; and from the names of places with which Albanopolis is connected, it appears clearly to have been in the southern part of the Illyrian territory, and in the modern Albania. How the name of this obscure tribe came to be extended to so considerable a nation, we have no means of even forming a conjecture.

The Albanians are mentioned under the name of Albani and Albanites by some of the late Byzantine historians.* Malte-Brun has cited passages from the life of Michael Palæologus by Pachymerus, and from Cantacazenus, in which they are described as a wild and independent people, living in the mountains to the northward of Acarnania and on the borders of Thessaly.†

Though the name of the Albanians was formerly confined to a comparatively small part of Illyricum, it cannot be supposed that the people who spoke the Albanian language were, at the period referred to, so restricted in their extent. This language is spread through all the country from Arta to Scutari. It is the idiom of all the oldest cities of Albania, and is spoken at Scutari, the ancient Scodra, which was a principal town of Illyricum in the time of Livy, and is still, by the Albanians, called by its ancient name; at Dulcigno, the Olchinum of Pliny; at Dibria, Corona, Durazzo, Chimera, and Dremas, and in Pelagonia, several of which places, as Masci has indicated, were known by name to Strabo, and the writers of times immediately following his age.‡

The Skipetarian race is divided into four principal stems, distinguished by differences of dialect. They are the following: 1. The Guegues and Mirdites, two tribes who speak one dialect, and must be accounted one branch of the nation. The Guegues inhabit the country of Budua, on the border

* Anna Commena, as Malte-Brun observed, first gave this people the name of Arbanites, and to their country that of "ro Apbavov," and Dufresne has cited a MS. poem on the taking of Constantinople, in which the designation of Arbanitia occurs. From Arvanites, the Turks probably derived the name of Arnaout, by which they distinguish the Albanians. (Malte-Brun, ubi supra, p. 175.)

Pachym. lib. vi. cap. 32.-Cantacazen, lib. ii.-Malte-Brun, Ann. des Voyages, tom. iii. p. 188.

‡ Essai sur l'Origine, les Mœurs et l'Etat actuel de la nation Albanienne, par M. Ange Masci; Trad. de l'Italien; Malte-Brun, Annales des Voyages, tom. iii.

of Cataro, and from Montenero to the limits of Herzegovina and the Antivari on the Adriatic: the Mierdites, who are a brave people, and adhere to the Roman Catholic religion, live in the Paschalik of Croia. 2. The Toxides inhabit the country to the southward of Guêgaria, on the right bank of the Genussus. 3. The Jagys, in the district of Berat and Delvino. 4. The Chumis, on the banks of the Acheron, to whom the Suliotes and Parginotes belong. All the four dialects have the same origin, but each has a character of its own, and is distinguished by particular words and peculiar a sound. This language is said to resemble the French in sound, but not in words.

The history of the Albanian language has long been a subject of curious inquiry among philologers. A collection of Albanian words was made by Leibnitz.† In 1635, Bianchi published at Rome a meagre vocabulary of this language, entitled Dictionarium Latino-Epiroticum; and in 1716 a grammar of the same idiom by Da Lecce appeared, which Professor Vater republished in 1822 in his "Vergleichungstafeln der europäischen Stamm-Sprachen." These, and a vocabulary of 1200 words by Kawallioti, were all the sources of information that were accessible to Thunmann, whose "Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen Völker" opened the way to a series of curious researches, which have been pursued by ethnological students of later times. Thunmann was, I believe, the first who advanced the opinion, already adverted to, that the Albanians are the descendants of the ancient Epirots and Illyrians. The same hypothesis was supported by Masci, and by Malte-Brun, who translated the memoir of Masci on the Albanian race. The subject has been further elucidated, and the principal facts have been finally established on a firm basis, by a recent author,§ F. Ritter von Xylander,

* Vater, Vergleichungstafeln, S. 136. Ritter von Xylander, S. 291.

This list has been republished by Malte-Brun at the end of an essay on this race of people by Masci, which has already been cited.

An extract from Da Lecce's "Osservazioni" may be seen in Sir J. Hobhouse's Travels in Albania.

§ Some notices on the grammar, with a collection of words, had previously been published in Leake's Researches.

whose work entitled "Die Sprache der Albanesen oder Schkipetaren," published in 1835, has put us in possession of the most important information on this subject.*

I shall not attempt to review the opinions of former writers on the Albanian language and its relations. Suffice it to say that the work of Xylander appears to have demonstrated certain positions in regard to it, which may briefly be stated as follows:

1. That the language of the Albanians is not, as it was once supposed to be, a mere jargon, compounded of elements derived from a variety of different sources, namely from a mixture of the idioms of surrounding nations, but that it is a peculiar and distinct language, having regular grammatical forms, and an essential character of its own.

2. That it is proved by the evidence of its grammatical inflexion, as well as by the structure and derivation of its vocabulary, to belong to the class of Indo-European languages.

3. That it does not belong to any particular groupe of these languages. It is neither a German nor a Slavonian idiom, nor does it bear any very close and peculiar resemblance to the Greek or Italic dialects.

4. This refutes, as far as it concerns the Illyrian race, the opinion of those who, with the learned author of the Mithridates, suppose all the idioms of nations to the southward of

* F. Ritter von Xylander's work contains a complete grammar of the Albanian language, with a copious vocabulary of Albanian and German, and of German and Albanian words, together with a translation of considerable portions of the New Testament into the Albanian language, and some fragments of national songs. To these are added several parallels between that language and various other European idioms, calculated to illustrate their mutual relations. It is from these data that the conclusions stated in the text result. We may observe that many parts of the grammatical inflexion are strikingly Indo-European, as the personal pronouns, and the declensions of nouns. We find s the sign of the genitive, n of the accusative; era, er, ora, the plural endings, like the er, ar, or of the Northern German. In the genitive and dative pl. abet, ebet, and ibet, come near to the abhyus of the Sanskrit, and ābus of the Latin dative. The following are some particular words corresponding in Sanskrit and Albanian: S. nri, nara, A. nieri, man ; S. mahat, A. mad, great; S. gau, A. kaou, ox; S. krimi, A. krimp, worm; S. asthi, A. eshte, bones; S. druh, A. drou, tree; S. pa, A. pi, drink; S. para, A. pare, first; S. mala, A. malli, hill; S. stira, A. stere, land; S. purusha, A. pourre, man. (V. Xylander, 298.)

VOL. III.

II

the Danube to belong to one groupe of languages, including Illyrian, Thracian, Pelasgian, and Phrygian dialects, and regard all the tribes who spoke these dialects as branches of one stock, which may be termed indifferently Thracian or Pelasgian. The bordering nations on the northern frontier of Greece, if we may form an estimate from the Albanian language of the idioms of the Epirotic nations and Illyrians, were not related by any ties of near consanguinity with the Greeks. The Illyrian and the Greek are kindred languages, but are not more closely allied than are the Greek and Slavonic, or the German and Celtic dialects.

It must be observed, that this observation does not apply with full force to the Thracians and their language, since we have no proofs that the languages of the Thracians and Illyrians were connected. We have already adverted to some considerations which render it probable that the Thracians were more nearly allied to the Hellenic race.

SECTION VI. Of the Hellenic Race.

Paragraph 1.-Of the country and people of Greece.

A line drawn from the Ambracian to the Maliac gulf, separates the primitive land of the Greeks from the countries immediately to the northward of it, namely, from Epirus and Macedonia. To the southward of this line are the mountainous tracts lying to the northward of the Corinthian gulf, from Acarnania to Boeotia, and all the rest of Greece. Perhaps the valley of the Peneus, further to the northward, lying between Mount Olympus and Mount Pindus, ought to be included within the primitive land of the Greeks, but a part of Thessaly originally belonged, as we have seen, according to Strabo, to the Thracians. The Thracian part of it was probably the northern border or Mount Olympus. Such were the confined limits of the celebrated Grecian race. Even within this narrow extent were to be found tribes whose claim to the Hellenic name was doubtful. It would be difficult to discover in this small and not remarkably productive tract the physical qualities which fitted it to be the cradle of the

most noble tribe of the human race, on whom nature bestowed the most perfect organisation of body, with the fullest developement of all the mental powers, enabling them in a few centuries not only to outstrip all the former acquirements of the human mind, but to display in every effort of the imagination and of the intellect an admirable and unrivalled perfection. It is only in mental acquirements which call for the accumulated labour of many ages that the nations of Western Europe, and that only within the last two centuries, can enter into any comparison with the ancient Greeks. A language the most expressive and eloquent of human idioms, and the most perfect instrument of human thought, was their first production, during unknown ages; and to ages little better known belong the majesty and beauty of the unrivalled Homeric poems. Long afterwards, during the lapse of two centuries from the time of Pericles, the barren Attica brought into existence, and to scarcely imitable perfection, sculpture and painting, rhetoric and oratory, dramatic literature, dialectics, the science of ethics, the Stoic and Epicurean, the Platonic and Peripatetic systems of philosophy. In the discovery of mathematical sciences other Grecian states came in for a proportional share of fame. In considering what the Greeks collectively have contributed towards the progressive improvement of the human mind, the greatness of their achievements is truly astonishing. What is most remarkable is the fact, that they derived little or no assistance from without: other cultivated nations have obtained much aid from their neighbours or predecessors; Greece may be said to have begun and to have carried forward the culture of the human intellect to the highest perfection unaided and alone.

It is difficult to account for the superior excellence of the Greeks in all the productions of the human mind, unless we may ascribe it mainly to the superior natural endowments of the race. This race was an offset from the same stock which produced the nations who spoke the Celtic, the Gothic, and the Slavonic languages, and still more nearly allied to those whose more cultivated idioms were the Sanskrit and the Latin. Are we to attribute the difference between all these nations, and the superiority of some over others, to physical influences