Let us suppose
further that, in many of these cases, a religious distinction was added
to a national distinction. Let us conceive one village Roman Catholic,
another Anglican, others Nonconformist of various types, even if we do
not call up any remnants of the worshippers of Jupiter or of Woden. All
this seems absurd in any Western country, and absurd enough it is. But
the absurdity of the West is the living reality of the East. There we
may still find all the chief races which have ever occupied the country,
still remaining distinct, still keeping separate tongues, and those for
the most part, their own original tongues. Within the present and late
European dominions of the Turk, the original races, those whom we find
there at the first beginnings of history, are all there still, and two
of them keep their original tongues. They form three distinct nations.
First of all there are the Greeks. We have not here to deal with them as
the representatives of that branch of the Roman Empire which adopted
their speech, but simply as one of the original elements in the
population of the Eastern peninsula.
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