put forward by the Rumanians and doubling the highest conceded by their rivals, we get a probable maximum of some 200,000 souls.

Everything about the race, beyond its existence, is as nebulous and vague as its numbers are uncertain. The very name by which they are known to the outside world is unknown to themselves; Vlach (or Wallach) being only a Slavonic modification of a Germanic term (philologically identical with our familiar 'Welsh') by which the Teutonic invaders of the Roman Empire designated impartially all the Latin-speaking regions of Europe, including Italy herself. Kutzo-Vlach is a specific variety of that generic term, and is variously derived from the Albanian kutzi ('little') or from the modern Greek kutzos (lame'). If the former etymology is accepted, the Kutzo-Vlachs of to-day would seem to inherit the name of 'Little Vlachia' (Mixpoẞraxía) by which the Vlach colonies in Ætolia and Acarnania were designated by Byzantine writers in contradistinction to the 'Great Vlachia ' (Meyaλoßλaxía) in Thessaly. If, however, the second derivation is preferred, the term may be either a nickname alluding to the lisping pronunciation of the southern Vlachs, or a diminutive; kutzo in composite words denoting in Modern what the preposition Tò denoted in Ancient Greek-' somewhat,' little.' In that case Kutzo-Vlach would mean a 'Vlach in a small degree,' as distinguished from the pure Vlach of the

north.

The historic antecedents of this mysterious population are, like its name and its numbers, a matter of speculation. The Vlachs flit across the pages of medieval literature one moment only to disappear the next. In the earliest mention made of them by the Byzantine writer Kedrenos (about A.D. 970), Vlach wayfarers are described as murdering the brother of the Bulgarian Tsar Samuel near Prespa in Western Macedonia. A hundred years later Anna Komnena speaks of the race as dominating the Pindus glens; and in the middle of the following century the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela finds it established as an independent principality in the plain of Thessaly. About the same time we are told by the Byzantine historian, Niketas Khoniates, that the Vlachs were making their presence felt on the Balkan highlands.

In 1185 this branch of the family rose in revolt against the Eastern Emperor and, in alliance with the Bulgars, established a Vlacho-Bulgarian empire which endured till 1257. Meantime, their brethren in Thessaly, after having been for a time absorbed by the despotate of Epirus and then having regained their independence, were incorporated in the Servian Empire of Stephan Dushan (1336-56) which was overthrown by the Turks

Such, in bare outline, is the fitful and meagre record of the southern Vlachs in that long period during which the Balkan Peninsula afforded a theatre for a perpetual warfare between Greek, Slav, Bulgar, Latin and Turk From the final subjugation of the Peninsula in the 15th century till the middle of the 19th, they remained an integral portion of the conglomerate Orthodox community. under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which was officially designated by the Ottoman conqueror as 'Millet Rûm,' or 'the Greek Nation.'

For the rest, that momentous political revolution did not affect the social status of the Kutzo-Vlachs. The more primitive members of the race continued to lead the pastoral existence which had long been theirs, changing their abode with the seasons and roaming up and down with their sheep and goats in search of pasture. The more progressive elements took a conspicuous part in the intellectual and economic revival which stirred the Greek rayahs in the 18th century and prepared the way for their national emancipation. The Kutzo-Vlach settlement of Moskhopolis in Epirus offers a brilliant illustration of that revival. From an obscure colony of shepherds it rose to the rank of a wealthy commercial and literary centre, boasting not only extensive trade with Western Europe, but also flourishing schools, & public library, and a printing press. Yannina, the capital of Epirus, also owed much of its contemporary fame as a seat of culture to Vlach energy, enterprise and intelligence. After the destruction of Moskhopolis by the Turco-Albanians, Metzovo, Krushevo, and especially Monastir, took its place and, despite all the unfavourable conditions created by maladministration and unrest, continue to prosper to this day.

Throughout the four centuries mentioned, the KutzoVlachs, while retaining their Latin idiom in varying

degrees, and for the most part avoiding intermarriage with outsiders, became more and more identified, in national sentiment and aspirations, with their Greek coreligionists. Long propinquity, identity of creed, similarity of character, and the necessity of presenting a solid front to the common enemy, brought about a union which in many cases has resulted in the total, and in others in the partial, Hellenisation of the race. Thus the Kutzo-Vlachs of Etolia and Acarnania, once known as 'Little Vlachia,' and those of Thessaly, once known as 'Great Vlachia,' though still preserving their tribal appellations of Tzintzars and Karaguni, have to a large extent adopted the Greek language; while the other communities in Epirus and Macedonia use their Latin idiom, or what is left of it, for domestic purposes, but in education and commerce employ pure Greek.

So whole-hearted has this identification become that the protomartyr of the Hellenic War of Independence, the poet-patriot Rhigas of Pherae in Thessaly, was half a Vlach by birth, and many of the most eminent leaders in that struggle-Collettis, Zongas, Grivas, and otherswere Kutzo-Vlachs. Indeed, D. Urquhart, writing as an eye-witness, states that this population' contributed to the Revolution, at various times, as many as ten thousand men.' The Hellenic sympathies of the race are further shown, not only by the prominent part which it played in the Hellenic renaissance, but even more clearly by the amount of wealth which it has since devoted to the embellishment of the Hellenic capital, the strengthening of the Hellenic forces of defence, and generally to the prosperity of free Greece and Greece irredenta. Many of the greatest benefactors of the Greek nation during the last seventy years have been representatives of the KutzoVlach race-such, for example, as Tositsas, Sturnaras, Baron Sina, who founded and endowed numerous Greek schools in Macedonia and built the Academy in Athens, and Averoff, a native of Metsovo, who a few years ago founded and endowed many Greek schools in Epirus, restored the Stadion at Athens and, on his death, presented to the Hellenic Kingdom its best warship-a vessel which rendered inestimable services to the Allies in their recent war with Turkey. It seems almost superfluous to add that some of the most highly distinguished

Greek poets and scholars-such as Zalocostas, Crystallis, Papageorgiou-are of Kutzo-Vlach origin.

It was not until some fifty years ago that the first attempt was made to check this normal assimilation of the Kutzo-Vlach element to the Hellenic. About 1850 the nationalist movement which had long agitated more advanced countries reached the provinces that constitute the modern kingdom of Rumania. One fruit of that movement was the ejection from the Rumanian dictionary of the Slavonic, Magyar, and other foreign words which predominated over the Latin at the rate of four to one, the substitution of the Roman for the Slavonic characters, and the systematic purification' of the national folklore from the Slavonic elements which permeated it. Side by side with this literary revival went on a political agitation aiming, not only at the liberation of those provinces, but also at the reclamation of all Roman' populations beyond their frontiers. The nearest field for this work was naturally Transylvania, and there the efforts of the Rumanian patriots towards the preservation of the Rumanian nationality clashed with the efforts made by the Magyar rulers towards its suppression. Hence a feud which, notwithstanding Rumania's close diplomatic relations with the Dual Monarchy since 1878, has lost none of its bitterness; and the exertions of the Bucharest League for the Cultural Unity of all Rumanians,' which finds a ruthless opponent in the Hungarian 'Cultural Leagues,' designed to bring about the Magyarisation of the Rumanian subjects of Hungary. At the same time, Rumanian propagandists, not content with the task that lay close at hand, cast their eyes farther afield, and, in 1853, the Transylvanian patriot Eliadi Radule published his 'Souvenirs d'un proscrit,' wherein he apostrophised the southern KutzoVlachs as Rumanians of Macedonia,' and hailed as 'brethren,' 'children of Pindus,' 'blood of Italy,' all those chiefs in the Greek War of Independence who happened to be natives of Epirus, though some of them, like Marko Botzaris and Tzavallas, if they were not Greeks, were Albanians, and had as little to do with Pindus as with Italy. Under this poetic inspiration a 'Macedonian Committee' was founded at Bucharest in 1860, with the avowed object of working for the formation of a Greater

Rumania embracing Macedonia, Albania, Epirus and Thessaly. Five years later the crusade found its Peter the Hermit in Apostol Margharitis, a Kutzo-Vlach of Klissura, in Western Macedonia, who, though he had hitherto called himself a Greek, suddenly discovered that he was a Rumanian, and, having converted himself, conceived the idea of converting his neighbours through a scholastic propaganda. Execrated by the Greeks as an apostate, hailed by the Rumanians as an apostle, and furnished with funds contributed by the dreamers of the Danube, Margharitis set to work to wean the KutzoVlachs from the cause of Hellenism, to imbue them with a sense of their Rumanian nationality, and thus to pave the way for the realisation of the grandiose dream.

The Committee in its proclamations dwelt on the fact that the various branches of a nation cannot attain to full national consciousness save through a study of their history and an investigation into their origin. And so the origin of the Kutzo-Vlachs, always an interesting ethnographical problem, now assumed a practical significance the reality of which can only be appreciated by those who know to what extent the present inhabitants of the Near East live in the past, and how seriously they use abstract speculations as food for political aspirations and as a basis for territorial claims. No Italian politician has ever thought of demanding the annexation of Spain on the ground that the inhabitants of the Iberian speak a Latin idiom akin to that spoken by the inhabitants of the Italian Peninsula. France, despite an equally close kinship with the Latins' of the south, has hitherto refrained from pressing a political case founded on the dictionary. And the average Briton would be amused if he were told that he might aspire to the allegiance of the Bretons across the Channel. But in the East they order these matters differently.

According to one theory, widely held and supported by many learned writers, both Rumanian and German, the Kutzo-Vlachs are an off-shoot of the trans-Danubian Vlachs who crossed the river at some unknown time for some unknown reason and spread southwards, being, like the former, descendants of the Roman colonists and natives of Dacia. According to a rival theory, to which the no less learned Austrian scholar Robert Rösler gave