reminded me of certain oak-plantations in northern Euboea, where the trees run up so close together that they can put out no branches, and therefore look like a forest of hop-poles. A peculiar stillness seemed to weigh down upon these woods; not a leaf was stirring; nothing was to be heard; our party wound noiselessly along over the soft ground, except that at intervals a horse's hoof, striking against a projecting root, broke the deathlike stillness. True, it was in August and at mid-day; but that silent forest of Sperdet shall I remember as long as I live."

The boundaries of Albania may be roughly described as, to the south, Greece and the Gulf of Arta; to the east, the Pindus range, and in general the watershed between the streams flowing eastward and westward; to the north, Montenegro and Bosnia; to the west, the Adriatic. The boundary line between northern and southern Albania nearly corresponds with that which anciently divided Illyria from Epirus.

Several races of men are found in this narrow mountainous tract. Besides the Albanians, whose own name for themselves is Skipetar, i. e. rock-dwellers, there are Greeks and Wallachians in southern, Bulgarians and Wallachians in central, and Servians in northern Albania. Of these nonAlbanian elements, the Bulgarians and Servians belong to the Slavonic, and the Wallachians to the Romanic stock. Of the origin of the Albanians we shall speak subsequently. They are divided into two main stocks, the Tosks and the Gueghs, speaking two dialects of the Albanian language, which Herr Hahn considers to differ as much from each other as German from Dutch. The Tosks are found in Epirus, the Gueghs in Illyria; the river Skumbi, the Gemusus of Strabo, - being the boundary between the races. Among the Tosks the Mahomedan element preponderates; but it is Shiite, or heretical, as tracing its religious traditions to Ali instead of Omar. The Christian Tosks all belong to the Greek Church. Cyprien Robert ascribes to the Tosks generally an erect carriage and a free proud glance, which make them so far contrast favourably with the Gueghs; but their occasional sidelong and furtive looks reveal, what is the fact, that they are the most perfidious among the Albanian tribes.

Among the Gueghs, on the other hand, the Christian element predominates. Those who are Mahomedans belong to the orthodox or Sunnite church, and mortally detest the Shiites. Among all the Christian Albanians, the Catholic tribe of the Mirdites holds the first place. Descended from

Scanderbeg's brothers in arms, they are, according to Cyprien Robert, "the most vivacious and youthful portion of the Albanian people." They number about 96,000 souls, and inhabit the lofty plateau, with its related valleys, between the black or southern Drin and the sea. They are free from all Mahomedan intermixture, for they have always expelled apostates from their community. Their way of life is thus described by the eye-witness above quoted: "Numerous traces of the patriarchal life survive among this people. The domestics are treated like children by the head of the family. The latter, like a pontiff of old, has alone the right to kill the garlanded sheep reserved for festive occasions, which is then roasted whole, and partaken of by the whole household, before the gate of the keep. While the thin Greek wines, which pass in Albania for the produce of France, circulate among the company, the pliak, or master, sitting cross-legged on his carpet, takes the Mirdite lyre, strikes it with rapid touch, and, like another Achilles before his tent, sings the exploits of himself and his Palikares [warriors], who, roused by the strain, commence a Homeric dance. By way of contrast to this simple home scene, observe those traders who are receiving an audience from the chieftain of a phara or clan; their kneeling posture, their hands hidden beneath their drooping sleeves, their every movement, reproduces the gestures which suppliants are represented as using in the Byzantine miniatures. Among a people which has thus preserved its antique cast, the Church alone seems perpetually to renew her youth; the chapels without number which deck the Mirdite valleys appear at a distance of such lustrous whiteness that one would suppose them newly built. Their structure, in the form of the Latin cross, and their bell-towers - points of distinction between them and the Greek churches-give a momentary pleasure to the European traveller, but grieve those who understand the true interests of the Mirdites. The Greek rite is, in fact, too popular in the peninsula to allow of one's desiring to see a fusion of all the Greco-Slaves in the bosom of the Latin Church, which is far from meeting amongst them with the same sympathies as its rival. It is through the religious union of the rites that one would arrive most surely at the reconciliation of the peoples." Perhaps so; but till that union is effected by proper authority, which recent manifestations have shown to be not absolutely impossible, it is difficult to share the chagrin at the fidelity of the Mirdites to the worship of their ancestors, still less to wish them to adopt the rite of a schismatic church.

The Catholics of northern Albania are divided among

seven sees, three of them archbishoprics, which are all directly under Propaganda. The clergy are for the most part men of worth and enlightenment.

In any estimate of the population of Albania, exactness is unattainable, for no census appears to have been ever taken. Herr Hahn computes the total number of Albanians in the Turkish empire at 1,600,000, of whom doubtless the great majority reside within the limits of Albania, though many are found in Turkish Servia and Bosnia. We have met with no estimate, even approximate, of the numbers of the Greeks, Wallachians, Bulgarians, and Servians settled in the country. Of the number of the expatriated Albanians it is possible to speak with greater certainty. First, there are three insignificant Albanian settlements in Dalmatia. In the kingdom of Naples there is an Albanian population numbering 86,000 souls, and still retaining their national dress and customs, whose ancestors crossed the Adriatic in the fifteenth century, to escape the necessity of submitting to Turkish rule. A far more considerable Albanian offshoot exists in the kingdom of Greece. In the terrible wars of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when Venice was struggling with Turkey for the Morea, and the miserable Greeks of the Levant were a prey alike to Christian and Ottoman corsairs, a large portion of Greece was depopulated through the slaughter, translocation, or enslavement of the original inhabitants. In the war between Venice and Bayezid [Bajazet] II., which was terminated in 1502, the Greek population of Argolis was exterminated; some years later the populous and flourishing island of Ægina was taken by the corsair Barbarossa, and met with a like fate; from other districts, as Attica, and from other islands, as Spezas, the greater part of the natives were swept away by the sword or reduced to slavery; and in all these cases Albanians after a time occupied the vacant ground. Mr. Finlay calculates that the Albanians in Greece hold one-fifth of the soil, and that they are about 200,000 in number, of whom onetenth profess Islam. The traveller in Attica must not suppose that the peasant whom he meets on the ridge of Parnes descends from ancestors who fought at Marathon; at the utmost he may claim kindred with those Epirotes whose serried phalanx under Pyrrhus repeatedly broke through the legions of Rome. Boeotia also, and Argolis, and the district round Corinth, together with parts of Elis and Messenia, and a portion of the upper valley,

"where Peneus strong Pours his incessant flood along,"

are almost entirely peopled by Albanians, who, like their

countrymen in Attica and the islands, exclusively belong to the Tosk race.

The Greek-speaking population in southern Albania, which is strangely interspersed among the Albanians and Wallachians, must be for the most part descended from the old Greek colonies in Epirus, particularly Ambracia, which was for centuries a large and flourishing city. They all belong to the orthodox Greek Church. The Wallachians occupy the western slopes of the Pindus range; they are described as an inoffensive, hard-working, pastoral people. The Bulgarians on the lake of Ochrida much resemble them. M. Robert charmingly contrasts their way of life with that of the warlike Albanians: "It is on the journey from Ochrida to Prisren that one can best study the differences in morale which separate the Bulgarian, half shepherd, half husbandman, from the Skipetar, half shepherd, half hunter and warrior. In passing through the country of the hunters, one scrutinises every rock with an anxious glance; one fancies at each moment that one sees the glitter of a gun-barrel among the bushes, Among the Bulgarians, on the other hand, what absolute security! Wherever you make a halt, the shepherds come down from the hills to greet you with friendly wishes; they form a ring and squat down round the carpet on which the Frank is resting, and chat with him about the things which they hold dear, or sing to him perhaps one of those Slavonic airs which send the listener into a deep and pleasing reverie. With what a sense of profound peace did I watch the sunrise and the sunset in these vast forests, the asylum of a free and primitive existence, where man is the brother of all his fellows, and the very wild animals do not flee at his approach!"

To the north and north-east of Scodra, there is a considerable intermixture of Servians in the population, and Slavonic names-Podgoritza, Plownitza, Jakowa, &c.-become common. The redoubtable Montenegrins, whose mountain fastness bounds Albania to the north-west, are also of Servian race, and belong to the Greek Church. Whatever may be their merits as Turcophagi,-a name which the modern Greeks love to confer on any masterful harasser of their oppressors, —their razzias, it would seem, do not spare their Christian neighbours; the Catholic Mirdites of the valley of the united Drin would, according to M. Robert, make an Eden of those splendid plains, but for the sense of insecurity produced by the frequent incursions of these marauding mountaineers.

From the impossibility of giving unity to the picture, it is difficult to feel a very lively interest in the history of that

portion of mankind which, from age to age, has lived among these mountains. Physically considered, the north and south of Albania, or Illyria and Epirus, are two distinct regions, of which one may be loosely described as the basin of the Drin, the other as the district of Dodona, with its central lake (that of Joannina) and radiating valleys. In the same way, there are at least two historical threads which the enquirer into the past of Albania must disentangle from the mass of heterogeneous material presented to him in the ancient authors and the Byzantine chronicles. To one of these, which relates to northern Albania, belongs the story of Scanderbeg; to the other, the exploits of the Suliotes, and the obscure fortunes of the sovereignty of Epirus. Not till the days of Ali Pasha did a uniting power appear, endowed with sufficient energy to weld these recalcitrant and explosive elements into something like a national organism. Herr Hahn considers that Ali, wicked as he was, and while working solely for his own interest, did in great measure effect this. From Arta to Scutari the Albanians, whatever might be their creed, felt proud of their countryman; the feeling of nationality, the sense of common interests, gradually arose; and through all subsequent confusions has, in our author's opinion, held its ground.

4

It would require an elaborate essay to explore the question, what was the ethnical relation between the Illyrico-Epirote tribes and the Hellenic race. The learned Greek professor whom we quoted above decides it summarily by assuming as a fact a close relationship between, at least, the Epirotes and the Greeks. But against this notion we have to set the distinct words of Thucydides, who always speaks of the Epirote tribes as Bápẞapoi. Yet we are told, that after the assassination of Clearchus, a Dardanian (that is, a native of a district at the extreme north-eastern border of Illyria) was chosen by the soldiers in the room of the Spartan general. Is this choice conceivable unless there was felt to be some close affinity between Dardanians and Greeks-some tie closer than that of an ultimate common derivation from the Pelasgic stock? But, leaving this point, we must admit that in the history of the population of this region, before and long after the Christian era, there is slight matter to detain us. It is the old story of the kites and the crows, each getting and losing the upper hand in turn. Under Pyrrhus, the political centre of gravity was moved to the southward; and Epirus, thanks to a large infusion of Greek culture, became momentarily famous. But a series of weak and vicious successors on the Epirote throne, and the generally troublous state of the Eu

4 Xen. Anab, iii. 1.