influence of the Greek clergy has prevented them from looking elsewhere than to Greece for the fulfilment of their destinies.

always sat light upon them.

But their faith has

When the hand of the Byzantine emperors was lifted against them, they went over in a body to the Latin Church. When Latin emperors reigned at Constantinople, the spirit of opposition drove the Wallachs back to the Orthodox creed. They have since then adhered to it, because the Orthodox clergy could alone afford them protection and support in the dark ages of Turkish rule. But there are already indications of an approaching change. As in Bulgaria a religious movement preceded the political movement, so also among the Wallachs it is not improbable that the first step towards the assertion of a national existence may be the demand for a national Church. Coming events cast their shadows before, and a slight incident which occurred a few weeks ago in a Wallach village of the Pindus may perhaps be pregnant with big results. One Sunday morning the villagers collected round the church and informed their priest that he had to read the Mass in Wallach. The priest, though himself a Wallach,

demurred to their request, probably because, like many of his flock, he scarcely understood the sense of the Greek words which he recited. The peasants, however, insisted, and replied that they were one and all determined not to attend again at church until the service was performed in their own tongue. On that Sunday the priest celebrated the divine service in an empty church. In the course of the week he thought better of it, and on the following Sunday Mass was read in Wallach, probably for the first time in history. Since then the priest has been suspended, the village threatened with excommunication, and the church closed by the ecclesiastical authorities. If, as the Greek clergy assert, this incident was merely the work of Roumanian propagandists, the movement may be nipped in the bud; but if, as I believe, it is the first open expression of a general feeling among the Wallachs, the spiritual and temporal weapons of the Orthodox Church will be as powerless to check its development as they proved themselves to hinder the growth of the national Church of Bulgaria. It has always been the error, not to say the crime, of the Patriarchate, that it has

invariably failed to allow sufficient latitude for national expansion within the bosom of the Orthodox Church. It was not till after many years of struggle and the threat of a disastrous schism that the Patriarchate recognised the claims of free Greece to a national autokephalous Church. The same obstinacy has provoked the Bulgarian schism, and has, by estranging the Slavs of Turkey, endangered the very existence of Hellenism. Such another criminal folly may lose to Greece the wavering allegiance of the Wallachs, for their sympathy at the present moment is of but a negative sort. Their nation does not probably count altogether more than half a million of souls, and it is only through annexation to Greece that they have hitherto looked for release from Turkish rule. But military conscription, heavy taxation, possible restrictions on their nomadic habits, are so many circumstances which tend to temper their enthusiasm for Greek annexation. Were the headstrong pride of the Greek clergy to involve them in a struggle with their spiritual leaders, the chief tie which binds them to Greece would

snap.

Roumanian propagandism is already

at work amongst them; and though in some places its emissaries have been coldly received, in many others their words have found ready listeners, for they have been addressed to men among whom the pride of race is as strong, if not stronger than among any other of the rising nationalities of Turkey, and the experience of the last few years is at hand to show how quickly and irresistibly the spark concealed for so many centuries under the smouldering ashes of past traditions can leap once more into an all-consuming flame.

This propaganda has generally taken the form of an educational propaganda; and though its efforts have been mainly directed towards Macedonia, as it was there that it seemed the most urgent to counteract Hellenic influence, and the subject might therefore have been properly alluded to in connection with that province, I refrained from doing so until I had dealt with the Wallach question in general.

This movement is not altogether a new one, as seems often to be assumed. It originated sixteen years ago in the foundation at Bucarest of a Macedo-Roumanian Syllogus for the en

couragement of national education among the Romounoi south of the Danube. Substantial pecuniary assistance has always been forthcoming in aid of the undertaking to which the political events of the last few years have given a fresh impetus. In 1880, no less than £4000 was expended by the Syllogus; and I understand that this year that sum will probably be exceeded. Up to the present time fifteen schools, of which three are for girls, have been established under the auspices of the Syllogus, who has sent out all the teachers from Roumania (sixteen male and four female). The boys' schools are attended altogether by 1200 pupils, the girls' schools by 250; and notwithstanding the opposition of the Greek clergy, who denounce them in the blackest terms to the Turkish authorities, they are gradually moulding by their teaching and influence the minds of the Wallach youth.

When, however, it is asked what good will result from this propaganda for the future of the Wallachs, it is difficult to find any satisfactory answer. They are united by so many ties to the Hellenes, that their future amalgamation with Greece has hitherto been looked upon as