540 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



civilisations converged in Rome itself and were thence diffused 

 throughout the West, that the traditions of previous cultural 

 epochs never died out, acquired new life with the Renascence and 

 were thus perpetuated to the present day, it may be claimed for 

 the gifted Italian people that they have been for a longer period 

 than any others under the unbroken sway of general humanising 

 influences. The results, owing to the racial temperament, have 

 not been entirely satisfactory, nor has complete harmony ever 

 been established between the ethical sense, the feeling of Art, 

 and the religious sentiment. The discordance culminated in the 

 Renascence Age, when the great revival of Art and of letters left 

 a degraded form of religion untouched and, as would seem, 

 brought about, or at least was associated with, a distinct lowering 

 of public morals. Hence pessimism, which has been called the 

 mental disease of our times, has sounded perhaps a deeper note 

 amongst the leaders of thought in Italy than elsewhere. 



These "Latin Peoples," as they are called because they all 

 speak languages of the Latin stock, are not confined 



*ipt_ 



Rumanians. to tne W est - To the Italian, French, Spanish,. 

 Portuguese, with the less known and ruder Wallon 

 of Belgium and Romansch of Switzerland, Tyrol, and Friuli, must 

 be associated the Rumanian current amongst some 9 millions 

 of so-called " Daco-Rumanians " in Moldavia and Wallachia, i.e. 

 the modern kingdom of Rumania. The same Neo-Latin tongue 

 is also spoken by the Tsintsars or Kutzo-Vlacks 1 of the Mount 

 Pindus districts in the Balkan Peninsula, and by numerous 

 Rumanians who have in later times migrated into Hungary. 

 They form a compact and vigorous nationality, who claim direct 

 descent from the Roman military colonists settled north of the 

 Lower Danube by Trajan after his conquest of the Dacians 

 (107 A.D.). But great difficulties attach to this theory, which 

 is rejected by many ethnologists, especially on the ground that, 

 after Trajan's time, Dacia was repeatedly swept clean by the 



1 The true name of these southern or Macedo-Rumanians, as pointed out 

 by Gustav Weigland (Globus, LXXI. p. 54), is Aranuini or Armani, i.e. 

 " Romans." Tsintsar, Kutzo- Vlack, etc. are mere nicknames, by which they are 

 known to their Macedonian (Bulgar and Greek) neighbours. See also W. R. 

 Morfill in Academy, July i, 1893. 



