IX.] THE NORTHERN MONGOLS. 347 



conversion of Saint Stephen I. (997-1038), after which the 

 Magyars became gradually assimilated in type and general culture, 

 but not in speech, to the western nations 1 . Their harmonious 

 and highly cultivated language still remains a typical member 

 of the Ural-Altaic family, reflecting in its somewhat composite 

 vocabulary the various Finno-Ugric and Turki elements (Ugrians 

 and Permians from the Urals, Volga Finns, Turki Avars and 

 Khazars), of which the substratum of the Magyar nation is con- 

 stituted 2 . 



Politically the Magyars continue to occupy a position of vital 

 importance in Eastern Europe, wedged in between the northern 

 and southern Slav peoples, and thus presenting an insurmount- 

 able obstacle to the aspirations of the Panslavist dreamers. The 

 fiery and vigorous Magyar nationality, a compact body of about 

 8,000,000 (1898), holds the boundless plains watered by the 

 Middle Danube and the Theiss, and thus permanently separates 

 the Chekhs, Moravians, and Slovaks of Bohemia and the northern 

 Carpathians from their kinsmen, the Yugo-Slavs ("Southern Slavs ") 

 of Servia and the other now Slavonized Balkan lands. These 

 Yugo-Slavs are in their turn severed by the Rumanians of Neo- 

 Latin speech from their northern and eastern brethren, the Ruth- 

 enians, Poles, Great and Little Russians. Had the Magyars and 

 Rumanians adopted any of the neighbouring Slav idioms, it is 

 safe to say that, like the Ugrian Bulgarians, they must have long 

 ago been absorbed in the surrounding Panslav world, with con- 

 sequences to the central European nations which it would not be 

 difficult to forecast. Here we have a striking illustration of the 

 influence of language in developing and preserving the national 

 sentiment, analogous in many respects to that now witnessed on 

 a larger scale amongst the English-speaking populations on both 



1 Ethnology, p. 309. 



- Yambery, perhaps the best authority on this point, holds that in its 

 structure Magyar leans more to the Finno-Ugric, and in its vocabulary to the 

 Turki branch of the Ural-Altaic linguistic family. He attributes the efface- 

 ment of the physical type partly to the effects of the environment, partly to the 

 continuous interminglings of the Ugric, Turki, Slav, and Germanic peoples in 

 Pannonia (Ueber den Ursprung der Magyaren, in Mitt. d. K. K. Geograph. 

 Ges., Vienna, 1897, XL. Nos. 3 and 4). 



