of the peninsula, and resulted, after the vicissitudes of a ten years' struggle, in the erection of the so-called Wlacho-Bulgarian kingdom. Now the Byzantine writers persistently speak of Peter and Asen as Wallachs, and ascribe to the Wallachs not only the initiative of, and the chief part in, the insurrection, but the whole credit of its successful issue. Had we no other sources but these writers to turn to for our information, it might still be possible to question their veracity, on the plea, fecit cui prodest. The Bulgarians, who monopolised the fruits of the victory, must surely have borne a part in the battle; and had the Wallachs really taken the preponderating part ascribed to them in the war of independence, they would assuredly not have vanished again, immediately after its conclusion, from the pages of history. But there is no need for mere conjectures. Slav sources afford abundant proof that Peter and Asen were not Wallachs, but Bulgarians, and, as is mentioned in the letter of Pope Innocent III. to the King of Hungary, descendants from the old stock of Bulgarian kings. Nor did they lay claim, as has been maintained,

to a Roman descent; but when the Pope, from whom they were seeking to obtain the recognition of their title, wrote to them that he had heard they descended from the noblest blood of Rome, they simply seized the cue which was thus given them, and with diplomatic dexterity thanked his Holiness for reminding them "of the blood and the fatherland from which we are descended." The title which these Bulgarian Czars assumed-Imperator Bulgarorum and Wlachorum-would perhaps alone show that they considered themselves rulers over the Bulgars in the first place, and in the second place only over the Wallachs. From all this it would appear that the Byzantines of the thirteenth century, in refusing to call the Bulgarians by their name until the triumph of the latter rendered all further prevarication useless, simply set the example followed by the Greeks of the nineteenth century, who also refused to recognise the existence of the Bulgarians as such, and continued persistently to call them Bulgarophone Hellenes, until the Bulgarian schism and the independence of Bulgaria exploded their idle quibbles.

That the Wallachs took a share in the struggle of the Bulgarians against the Byzantine empire, need not be gainsaid. But their share was not such as to insure them, after the victory, the enjoyment of equal, far less of preponderating, rights in the new kingdom. They still remain a subject race-pent up ever more closely in their mountain homes, until at last the Turkish invasion swamps both victors and vanquished, and again envelops in darkness the history of the peninsula. When they reappear once more on the surface out of the ferment of recent political events, their colonies in the Balkans and the Rhodope have disappeared-absorbed, probably, by the surrounding Bulgarian element. Hellenisation has also done its work in what was once Great Wallachia. The populations of Thessaly and Epirus have become, to all practical intents, Greek-Hellenised, no doubt, chiefly by the influence of the Greek clergy.

But in the wild mountain-ranges which separate Epirus, Thessaly, and Macedonia, and especially in the Pindus-which seems to have been the chief stronghold of their race-they have outlived the storms of centuries,-a compact

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population, with their own tongue and their own traditions, treasuring up the past until the hour of awakening has rung for each and all of the subject races of Turkey. It is not necessary, in order to claim for them a share in the future of the peninsula, to exaggerate the part they have played in its past history. No one who carries his eye along the map from Kalarrytæ to Metzovo and Samarina in the Pindus, down the Macedonian slopes of the Kambouni to Grevena, Kosana, and Servicen, and across the confines of Thessaly to Wlacho Livada and Elassona under the brow of Mount Olympus, can suppose that a hardy and intelligent race holding such commanding positions can fail to make its weight felt in the settlement of the destinies of these countries. And those are only the bulwarks of the Wallach race they have their outposts in all the neighbouring towns of the three provinces; and every winter, when the snow lies deep on their mountain homes, they sweep down upon the plains, dotting them about with tents and sheds, and covering the pasture-lands with herds and flocks innumerable. Adventurous and enterprising,

they present a rare combination of pastoral virtues and commercial instinct with a contemptuous repugnance for all agricultural pursuits. Almost the whole pastoral wealth of the country is in their hands; among the Albanians they are known only as the "Tchoban," or shepherds. Yet they show an equal aptitude for all commercial and industrial pursuits. Every year scores of young men leave their homes, to return only when their fortunes are made. The cotton and woollen tissues of Western Turkey, the coarse grey cloaks of the Greek and Albanian peasantry, the gorgeous gold and silver embroidery and inlaid weapons of which the Skipetar and the Palikar are so proud, the delicate wood-work which adorns the ceilings and panels of so many Albanian houses, are all the work of clever Wallach hands. But after years of toiling in the towns, the Wallach returns to his mountain home to enjoy the evening of life among his own kinsmen. In some respects there is no race among whom the national feeling is so strong as among the Wallachs. This national feeling has scarcely yet grown into a political movement. Hitherto the