somewhat elastic view of language that the dialect of Piedmont and the dialect of Sicily are classed under one head; still, as a matter of fact, they have a single classical standard, and they are universally accepted as varieties of the same tongue. But it is only in a few Alpine valleys that languages are spoken which, whether Romance or Teutonic, are in any case not Italian. The reunion of Italy in short took in all that was Italian, save when some political cause hindered the rule of language from being followed. Of anything not Italian so little has been taken in that the nonItalian parts of Italy, Aosta and the Seven German Communes, fall under the rule that there are some things too small for laws to pay heed to.

In the case of Germany the exceptions both ways are more numerous and more striking. Still they are exceptions. Wherever German-speaking people dwell outside the bounds of the revived German state, wherever that revived German state contains other than German-speaking people, we ask, and we can find the reason either way. Political reasons forbade the immediate annexation of Austria, Tyrol, and Salzburg. Combined political and geographical reasons, and, if we look a little deeper, ethnological reasons too, forbade the annexation of Courland, Livonia, and Esthonia. Some reason or other will, it may be hoped, always be found to hinder the annexation of lands which, like Zürich and Bern, have reached a higher political level. Outlying brethren in Transsilvania or at Saratof come again under the rule "De minimis non curat lex." On the other hand, where French or Danish or Slave or Lithuanian is spoken within the bounds of the new Empire, it is almost wholly in corners, corners won by conquest and that mainly by recent conquest. And on the principle that language is the badge of nationality, that without community of language nationality is imperfect, one main object of modern policy is to bring these exceptional districts under the general rule by spreading the German language in them. Everywhere in short, wherever a power is supposed to be founded on nationality, the common feeling of mankind instinctively takes language as the test of nationality. We assume language as the test of a nation, without going into any minute question as to the physical purity of blood in that nation. A continuous territory, living under the same government and speaking the same tongue, forms a nation for all practical purposes. If some of its inhabitants do not belong to the original stock by blood, they at least belong to it by adoption.

The question may now fairly be asked, what is the case of those parts of the world where people who are confessedly of different races and languages inhabit a continuous territory and live under the same government? How do we define nationality in such cases

as these? The answer will be very different in different cases, according to the means by which the different national elements in such a territory have been brought together. They may form what I have already called an artificial nation, united by an act of its own free-will. Or it may be simply a case where distinct nations, distinct in everything which can be looked on as forming a nation, except the possession of an independent government, are brought together, by whatever causes, under a common ruler. The former case is very distinctly an exception which proves the rule and the latter is, though in quite another way, an exception which proves the rule also. Both cases may need somewhat more in the way of definition. We will begin with the first, the case of a nation which has been formed out of elements which differ in language, but which still have been brought together into an artificial nation. In the other cases of which we have spoken thus far, the object which was consciously or unconsciously followed has been the formation of a nation marked out by language, and within whose bounds the use of any tongue other than the dominant tongue of the nation should be at least exceptional. But there is one nation in Europe, one which has a full right to be called a nation in a political sense, which has been formed on the directly opposite principle. The Swiss Confederation has been formed by the union of certain detached fragments of the German, Italian, and Burgundian nations. It may indeed be said that the process has been in some sort a process of adoption, that the Italian and Burgundian elements have been incorporated into an already existing German body, that, as those elements were once subjects or dependencies or protected allies, the case is one of clients or freedmen being admitted to the full privileges of the gens. This is undoubtedly true, and it is equally true of a large part of the German element itself. Throughout the Confederation, allies and subjects have been raised to the rank of confederates. But the former position of the component elements does not matter for our purpose. As a matter of fact, the foreign dependencies have all been admitted into the Confederation on equal terms. German is undoubtedly the language of a great majority of the Confederation; but the two recognized Romance languages are each the speech, not of a mere fragment or survival, but of a large minority forming a visible element in the general body. The three languages are all of them alike recognized as national languages, though, as if to keep up the universal rule that there should be some exceptions to all rules, a fourth language still lives on within the bounds of the Confederation, which is not admitted to the rights of the other three, but is left in the state of a fragment or a survival.* Is such an artificial body of this to be * While German, French, and Italian are all recognized as national languages by the

called a nation? It is plainly not a nation by blood or by speech. It can hardly be called a nation by adoption. For if we chose to say that the three elements of all agreed to adopt one another as brethren, yet it has been adoption without assimilation. Yet surely the Swiss Confederation is a nation. It is not a mere power, in which various nations are brought together, whether willingly or unwillingly, under a common ruler, but without any further tie of union. For all political purposes, the Swiss Confederation is a nation, one capable of as strong and true national feeling as any other nation. Yet it is a nation purely artificial, one in no way defined by blood or speech. It thus proves the rule in two ways. We at once recognize this artificially formed nation, which has no common language, but each of whose elements speaks a language common to itself with some other nation, as something different from those nations which are defined by an universal or at least a predominant language. We mark it as an exception, as something different from other cases. And when we see how nearly this artificial nation comes, in every point but that of language, to the likeness of those nations which are defined by language, we see that it is the nation defined by language which sets the standard, and after the model of which the artificial nation forms itself. The case of the Swiss Confederation and its claim to rank as a nation would be like the case of those gentes, if any such there were, which did not spring even from the expansion of an original family, but which were artificially formed in imitation of those which did, and which, instead of a real or traditional forefather, chose for themselves an adopted one.

In the Swiss Confederation then we have a case of a nation formed by an artificial process, but which still is undoubtedly a nation in the face of other nations. We now come to the other class, in which nationality and language keep the connexion which they have elsewhere, but in which nations do not even in the roughest way answer to governments. We have only to go into the Eastern lands of Europe to find a state of things in which the notion of nationality, as marked out by language and national feeling, has altogether parted company from the notion of political government. It must be remembered that this state of things is not confined to the nations which are under the yoke of the Turk. It extends also to the nations or fragments of nations which make up the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. On the state of things under the Turk there is no need to enlarge

Swiss Confederation, the independent Romance language which is still used in some parts of the Canton of Graubünden, that which is known specially as Romansch, is not recognized. It is left in the same position in which Welsh and Gaelic are left in Great Britain, in which Basque, Breton, Provençal, Walloon, and Flemish are left within the borders of that French kingdom which has grown so as to take them all in.

here. The essence of his rule is the trampling under foot of all national right. No one would be so unjust as to place the other great composite dominion on a level with his mere barbarian oppression. Yet that composite dominion is just as much opposed to those ideas of nationality towards which Western Europe has been long feeling its way. We have seen by the example of Switzerland that it is possible to make an artificial nation out of fragments which have split off from three several nations. But the AustroHungarian monarchy is not a nation, not even an artificial nation of this kind. Its elements are not bound together in the same way as the three elements of the Swiss Confederation. It does indeed contain one whole nation, in the form of the Magyars; we might say that it contains two, if we reckon the Czechs for a distinct nation. Besides these, there are Germans, Italians, Roumans, Slaves of almost every branch of the Slavonic race. Here, as on the other side of the Ottoman border, there is plenty of living and active national feeling; but, while in the West political arrangements for the most part follow the great lines of national feeling, in the East the only way in which national feeling can show itself is by protesting, whether in arms or otherwise, against existing political arrangements. Save the Magyars alone, the ruling race in the Hungarian kingdom, there is no case in those lands in which the whole continuous territory inhabited by speakers of the same tongue is placed under a separate national government of its own. And, even in this case, the identity between nation and government is imperfect in two ways. It is imperfect, because, after all, though Hungary has a separate national government in internal matters, yet it is not the Hungarian kingdom, but the Austro-Hungarian monarchy of which it forms a part, which counts as a power among the other powers of Europe. And the national character of the Hungarian government is equally imperfect from the other side. It is national as regards the Magyar ; it is not national as regards the Slave, and the Rouman. There is indeed one other nation, the Saxon, which is united under the rule of a single power; but that power is one which has no right to the name of government. The whole Bulgarian nation is under the rule of the Turk; but that simply means that the whole nation is given up to the brigandage of the Turk. The other nations of those parts are cut up among various powers. No one nation forms a single national government. One fragment of a nation is free under a national government, another fragment is ruled by civilized strangers, a third is trampled down by barbarians. The existing states of Greece, Roumania, and Servia are far from taking in the whole of the Greek, Rouman, and Servian nations. The mainland of Illyria is unnaturally cut off Dalmatian mouths. In all these lands

there is no difficulty in marking off the several nations; only in no case do the nations answer to any existing political power.

In these lands too another element comes in towards the formation of nationality of which, in that light, we know nothing in the West. In many cases religion takes the place of nationality; or rather the ideas of religion and nationality can hardly be distinguished. In the West a man's nationality is in no way affected by the religion which he professes, or even by his change from one religion to another. In the East it is otherwise. The Christian renegade who embraces Islam becomes for most practical purposes a Turk. Even if he keep his Greek or Slavonic language, he remains Greek or Slave only in a secondary sense. Even the Greek or Armenian who embraces the Latin creed goes far towards parting with his nationality as well as with his religion. In the Armenian indeed we have come very near to the phænomenon of the further East, where names like Parsee and Hindoo, names in themselves as strictly ethnical as Englishman or Frenchman, have come to express distinctions which are religious rather than national, or rather distinctions in which religion and nationality are absolutely the same thing. But this whole class of phænomena presents far too many subjects of enquiry to be dealt with cursorily at the end of an article. I merely point them out, as bringing in an element in the definition of nationality to which we are unused in the West. But it quite comes within our present subject to give one definition from the South-Eastern lands. What is the Greek? Clearly he who is at once Greek in speech and Orthodox in faith. The Hellenic Mussulmans in Crete, the Hellenic Latins in some of the other islands, are at the most imperfect members of the Hellenic body. The utmost that can be said is that they keep the power of again entering that body, either by their own return to the national faith, or by such a change in the state of things as shall make difference in religion no longer inconsistent with true national fellowship.

Thus, wherever we go, we find language to be the rough practical test of nationality. The exceptions are many; they may perhaps outnumber the instances which conform to the rule. Still they are exceptions. Community of language does not imply community of blood; it might be added that diversity of language does not imply diversity of blood. But community of language is surely, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, a presumption of the community of blood, and it is proof of something which for practical purposes is the same as community of blood. To talk of the Latin race," is in strictness absurd. We know that the so-called race is simply made up of those nations which adopted the Latin language. The Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic races may conceivably have been formed by a like artificial process.