30 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



cost. The taxation has been enormous ; and, as a result, emigration 

 has been excessive. The financial condition of the Kingdom is, 

 therefore, anything but satisfactory. But this is a mere passing 

 phase ; and, before many years, Italian finances will be put upon a 

 sound basis. The second great movement in Europe during the 

 epoch which we are considering is, then, the unification of Italy. 



To study the third we must turn to the extreme East, to Russia 

 and the Balkan Peninsula, the head and front of " the Eastern Ques- 

 tion," which, like a great sea serpent, periodically rears its head and 

 agitates the waters of international diplomacy and journalism. 

 Thirty years ago Russia had but recently recovered from the Crimean 

 war. This war very rudely dispelled the belief which had prevailed 

 in Russian military circles since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, 

 that the army of the Czar was invincible. It also shattered for 

 a time the dream upon which the Russian heart has always been set, 

 viz., the conquest of Constantinople and of the Balkan Peninsula. 

 In the extreme south-east of Europe is to be found the only nation 

 that has remained non-Christian in religion, and Asiatic in custom, 

 language, and blood : non-Christian in religion, for the Turks are 

 Mohammedans ; Asiatic in blood, language and custom, for they are 

 Mongolian by blood, Turanian in speech, and polygamous in 

 marriage relationships. The only race of any size in Europe that 

 resembles them to-day is the Hungarian, or Magyar race ; but this 

 people long ago laid aside its most distinctive Eastern manners, and 

 accepted the Cross of Christ. Its peculiar Turanian speech, compo- 

 site or agglutinate in structure, and, therefore, allied to the Turkish 

 language, it still retains. It is not in place to trace the early history 

 of the Turks in Europe. We remember that in 1453 the Sultan, 

 Mohammed II., forced the gates of Constantinople, changed the 

 Church of St. Sophia into the Mosque of Omar, and put an end to 

 the Greek division of the Roman Empire. We remember that the 

 invading Moslems carried their crescent northward to the walls of 

 Vienna. Hurled back by Sobieski, the Pole, they took refuge 

 behind the Balkan mountain ridges, seizing Greece, Bulgaria, 

 Roumania, Servia, and what are now other independent 

 states, along with what is Turkey proper to this day. From 

 the time of the conquest the most bitter hatred existed between the 

 invaders and the old inhabitants of the land. Differing in language, 



