The Modern Greeks, and the Opinions concerning Them [pp. 143-165]

THE MODERN GREEKS, AND
long enough to have studied and known her people in any tolerable degree and with anything of a candid temper, will need
historical testimony at all on the present question. The contradiction of the amalgamation hypothesis is stamped on the outer
and inner Greek man-on the very faces and persons and whole
character of the Greek people. Any person who, from the history and literature of the ancient Greeks, has formed his conception of them as a people, will find the Greek of far-gone
historic days wonderfully reproduced in the Greek of to-dayso much so as to surprise him; and to awaken in him a feeling
of gratulation in discovering that once so distinguished race to
be yet a living one. Indeed, we cannot but believe that such a
person will come to the conclusion-which the present writer
does not hesitate to avow as his own-that, of all the races of
the human family-at least of those that have been brought
into any degree of contact with other races-with the exception
of the Hebrews, toward whose conservation Almighty power
has been specially pledged-no lineage has been so remarkably
preserved as the Hellenic has been, through the changes of the
two thousand years and more that have elapsed since the ancient Greek republics gave way to foreign supremacy, and more
especially through the circumstances.and influences of the ages
since the fall of the Greek Empire down to the restoration of
Greek nationality under the modern kingdom. If any one wants
grounds for this as a probable presumptive conclusion, or facts
that furnish positive and palpable proof, at least of the substantial preservation of the Hellenic stock, he can find both.
TOPOGRAPHY OF THE COUNTRY AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE QUESTION.
The relative geographical position of Greece and the remarkable conformation of the country, if they do not afford positive
proof against the idea of the adulteration of population, mitigate at least any presumption on that side. Greece is peninsular, projecting far down into the sea; and it is only in one
direction that, as a country, she borders on the territory of any
other nation; and along a considerable part of that border line
she finds a peopld of her own stock-for Greeks mainly inhabit
Thessaly, and they form a plurality of the population of European Turkey. And, as respects its surface conformation, with
the exception of Switzerland there is probably no country so
148
[January,