ALBANIA. THE political crisis which has just been enacted in Greece induces the thoughtful looker-on to ask, What next, and next? Will the Greeks remain contented within their present unnatural limits; or will they make fresh attempts to realise their aspiration by uniting to free Greece the oppressed portions of the Hellenic race in Thessaly, Epirus, Macedonia, and the islands? Again, if they do make such attempts, what are their chances of success? The impression in Eastern Europe is, and it is probably a correct one,-that, while Lord Palmerston lives, the influence of England will be as steadily exerted to prevent Hellenic as it has been used to promote Italian unity. Bound by political traditions, of which he is himself in great part the creator, Lord Palmerston will still thwart the legitimate hopes of Greece, and prop up the detestable Turkish despotism; as if the whole position of the Eastern question were not utterly changed since 1840; as if Russian encroachment had not been shown to be an idle bugbear, and thus the only rational motive for endeavouring to consolidate Turkey cut away. But Lord Palmerston's influence will not be always paramount in England; and, even if it were, English policy is not quite all-powerful in the Levant. There are other nations which will be at least as glad to welcome-possibly to help forward-the liberation of oppressed Greeks, as they were to second the unitary projects of Italian liberals; and their sympathy in this case will be much more free from misgiving. But whatever may be the line of action resulting from the composition of the political forces of the great powers, it remains a deeply interesting question:-Are the peoples immediately outside the present artificial frontier of Greece, which runs from the Ambracian to the Pagasaan Gulf, contented to remain Turkish, or do their sympathies and interests tend to unite them with Greece? How go things in Thessaly? in Albania? in Macedonia? Where as in Thessaly and southern Macedonia-the population is chiefly Greek, there can be no difficulty in answering this question. If even the just and enlightened government of England be unanimously repudiated by the people of the Ionian Islands, in comparison of a union with the ill-organised Hellenic kingdom, it need not be asked what are the political hopes and longings of the men of Thessaly, Chalcidice, or Chios, while subjected to the alien yoke of one of the worst governments in the world. But the case of Albania is widely different. The Albanians are not Greeks; and but a fraction of them belongs to the Greek Church. The predominating religion of the country, on the whole, is that of Islam; and, among the Christian tribes, the most powerful and progressive at the present day-the Mirdites-are strenuous Catholics. What, then, are the chances, in the event of a struggle, of the voluntary adhesion of Albania to the Hellenic cause? In answering this question, we shall not strictly confine ourselves to the examination of the historical and political data which bear upon its solution, but shall endeavour, with the help of the excellent work of Herr Hahn,1 to exhibit some sort of picture of Albanian life and character, and to show what has been performed by, and what may be expected from, these restless mountaineers, who have been well named the Swiss of Eastern Europe. Sad and mysterious has been the fate of this gallant race. There seems no reason in the nature of things why, under happier circumstances, they should not have been moral and God-fearing, like the Tyrolese; industrious and intellectual, like the Swiss. The original mental endowment or spiritual calibre of the people must be rated very high. It must not be forgotten that Alexander the Great, through his mother Olympias, an Epirote princess, was half an Albanian; nor that these rugged mountains gave birth to a Pyrrhus and a Scanderbeg. Yet, as the Greek historian Paparigopulos remarks, Albania, though never quite subdued, has never quite achieved her independence; though warmly patriotic, her warriors and great men have worked for others rather than for herself; and though peculiarly open to large and ennobling ideas, her people in their own land have become fearfully deteriorated by the working of an atrocious policy and an impure religion. Will this always be so? What and where is the moral leverage which, if it can be fairly brought into play, may be expected to elevate Albania to the level of the Christian civilisation of Europe? It seems to us that a little consideration enables one to answer this question with tolerable confidence. Though not Greeks, the learned Athenian professor seems to have exaggerated the slight tie of kindred between the Epirote and the Greek,―the Albanians have always shown a marked predilection and receptivity for Greek ideas. Not Hellenic, they are still Hellenoid; Albania gravitates towards Greece, and tends 1 Albanesische Studien. 2 For particulars respecting the demoralisation of the Albanians, see Hobhouse, i. 135 sqq., and the chapter on Albania in the work of M. Cyprien Robert, Les Slaves de Turquie. to take a path of subordinate revolution around that rich centre of thoughts and memories, like a dependent planet round its central sun. One might quote many illustrations of this tendency. The classical scholar will remember that the Molossian kings prided themselves on their supposed descent from Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles; that the readiness of the Epirote tribes to ally themselves with Greek enterprises is apparent from several passages in Thucydides; and that the court of Pyrrhus at Ambracia represented almost exclusively Greek ideas and Greek civilisation. The same tendency reappears in modern times. The Hydriotes and Speziotes, those brave islanders who played so prominent a part in the Greek revolution, were of pure Albanian race. When Byron sought for some modern evidences to prove that the great Hellenic spirit was not extinct, he turned to the Albanian Suliotes: "On Suli's top and Parga's shore It is true that the Mahomedan Albanians were fatally active 3 Thục. ii. 80. upon her confining herself for some time to come to measures of domestic reform, and should discountenance, as they did in 1854, any premature attempt to extend her frontier, the prohibition could hardly be complained of. But when the inevitable day arrives, there seems reason to suppose that, if properly managed, the Albanians of all creeds will echo the Greek cry for independence. Not that it would be either easy or desirable to make Albania an integral portion of a bureaucratically organised Hellenic kingdom. Some sort of federal tie is the only one which would suit the circumstances;— perhaps a cantonal organisation, on the Swiss model, of the whole of Albania, leaving large local powers to the several cantonal governments, and providing for their representation by deputies in a general diet. Neither the "free Albanians," mostly Christians, of the pashalic of Scutari, nor the Mahomedan Tosks farther south, would be likely to submit to a more centralised form of government. But a grand Hellenic federation, with its centre at Constantinople, preserving the fidelity of many non-Greek or partially-Greek races, by wisely conforming itself to local circumstances and conditions,-a free powerful Christian state which, standing in the place of the Byzantine empire, should introduce modern ideas and modern science into the torpid East, instead of suppressing both after the fashion of its predecessor,-such a prospect as this would probably be enough to satisfy the most fervent Philhellene, even though political unity in the Mazzinian sense were still far from being realised. Albania is a land of rugged mountains and green valleys, the streams of which often expand into lakes, round which the population clusters thickest. Thus Joannina, the situation of which, placed as it is at a point whence valleys radiate in every direction except to the eastward, makes it, according to Herr Hahn, "the natural capital of united Epirus," stands on the shore of the lake known to the ancients as Pambotis: in a fortified islet in this lake Ali Pasha made his last stand against the armies of Sultan Mahmud. The oracle and temple of Dodona were somewhere in the same locality, though the site cannot be identified; the sweet acorn of the Chaones (Chaoniam glandem pingui mutavit arista) still grows in the oak-woods, and is still relished by their descendants the Liapes. Scutari, again, the ancient Scodra, the chief city of northern Albania, stands close to the lake of Scutari; and Ochrida, Struga, and other considerable places, are set round a lake in the centre of the country, anciently called Lychnitis, whence issues the southern Drin. The Drin, by its two branches, northern and southern, which unite nearly in lat. 42°, and their tributaries, waters a large proportion of northern Albania; it enters the sea near Alessio (on the site of the citadel of the ancient Lissus), where the great Scanderbeg in 1467 drew his last breath. Maize and all the common kinds of grain flourish exceedingly in Albania; rice succeeds in some places; the vine, the olive, and the mulberry grow luxuriantly in many of the more southern valleys, on the slopes of the mountains whose upper flanks are clothed with vigorous forests. Herr Hahn, who has a true eye for natural beauty, gives, in the following description of Croya, a place famous for its resistance to the Turks in the time of Scanderbeg, a typical picture of Albanian scenery: "Under the mountain range, described in the first section, which shuts in the vale of Tyranna to the eastward, occurs an isolated ridge, about four miles long, the summit of which forms a small barren plain. The western face of this ridge, fronting the valley, is extremely steep. Parallel to it runs a chain of low hills, overgrown with dwarf oaks and beeches and some forest-trees, and forming with the ridge a small valley. In the middle of this, but somewhat nearer to the rocky wall, rises a rock which on the south, east, and north sides is so precipitous as to be almost perpendicular; its western side alone has a gentler and less considerable fall. This rock bears the fortress of Croya, which, inaccessible on three sides, only required the aid of human skill on the fourth to make it, in medieval times, impregnable. This was then accomplished by strong walls and several round towers." Here, again, is a picture of a still scene in the Albanian woodlands: "From the village of Derweni the road passes for twenty miles through a nearly unbroken oak-forest, which takes its name from the village of Sperdet, and is the most considerable forest of its kind in all Albania; for it reaches northwards as far as the Mat, and covers not only the greater part of the plain between that river and the Ischm, but also stretches into the gullies and up the slopes of the eastern range. I passed through several belts of very fine timber, the trees in which seemed to be much about the same age, and appeared to stand at equal distances, as if they had been planted; every thing seemed so neatly and tidily kept by nature that one might have fancied oneself transported into a park. Here and there beeches grow among the oaks. But the beech of this district never spreads out into a timber-tree; several stems always shoot up from the same root, though these occasionally attain to a considerable height. The look of them |