These,
as I believe is no longer doubted, represent the ancient Illyrians. The
exact degree of their ethnical kindred with the Greeks is a scientific
question which need not here be considered; but the facts that they are
more largely intermingled with the Greeks than any of the other
neighboring nations, that they show a special power of identifying
themselves with the Greeks, a power, so to speak, of becoming Greeks
and making part of the artificial Greek nation, are matters of practical
history. It must never be forgotten, that among the worthies of the
Greek War of Independence, some of the noblest were not of Hellenic but
Albanian blood. The Orthodox Albanian easily turns into a Greek; and the
Mahometan Albanian is something which is broadly distinguished from a
Turk. He has, as he well may have, a strong national feeling, and that
national feeling has sometimes got the better of religious divisions. If
Albania is among the most backward parts of the peninsula, still it is,
by all accounts, the part where there is most hope of men of different
religions joining together against the common enemy.
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