Teuton is here, the great representative of what we may call the modern
European races, those whose part in history began after the
establishment of the Rouman power. The differences between the position
of the two races are chiefly these. The Slav in the East has præ-Roman
races standing alongside of him in a way in which the Teuton has not in
the West. On the Greeks and Albanians he has had but little influence;
on the Rouman and his language his influence has been far greater, but
hardly so great as the influence of the Teuton on the Romance nations
and languages of Western Europe. The Slav too stands alongside of races
which have come in since his own coming, in a way in which the Teuton in
the West is still further from doing. That is to say, besides Greeks,
Albanians, and Roumans, he stands alongside of Bulgarians, Magyars, and
Turks, who have nothing to answer to them in the West. The Slav, in the
time of his coming, in the nature of his settlement, answers roughly to
the Teuton; his position is what that of the Teuton would be, if Western
Europe had been brought under the power of an alien race at some time
later than his own settlement. The Slavs undoubtedly form the greatest
element in the population of the Eastern peninsula, and they once
reached more widely still. Taking the Slavonic name in its widest
meaning, they occupy all the lands from the Danube and its great
tributaries southward to the strictly Greek border. The exceptions are
where earlier races remain, Greek or Italian on the coast-line, Albanian
in the mountains. The Slavs hold the heart of the peninsula, and they
hold more than the peninsula itself. The Slav lives equally on both
sides of what is or was the frontier of the Austrian and Ottoman
empires; indeed, but for another set of causes which have effected
Eastern Europe, the Slav might have reached uninterruptedly from the
Baltic to the Ægæan.

This last set of causes are those which specially distinguish the