XI.] The Races of the Danube. 225 



needed for the growth of a new national life might 

 seem to be the rise of a dominant tribe — after the 

 likeness of the Franks — which in due course of time 

 should seize the falling Byzantine sceptre and assert 

 unquestioned sway over the whole peninsula. Could 

 something hke this have happened, the Eastern Ques- 

 tion would probably never have come up to perturb 

 the politics of modern Europe, and the entire careers 

 of Russia and Austria must have been essentially 

 modified. But for the Hungarians, Crim Tatars, and 

 Turks, something of this sort might very likely have 

 happened. As it was, however, no sooner did one 

 Slavonic community begin to rise to pre-eminence 

 than some fatal combination of invaders proceeded 

 to cripple its power, and this state of things con- 

 tinued until the turbaned infidel made an easy prey 

 of the whole region. 



In the ninth century the chronic agitation of 

 Eastern Europe was raised to terrible fever-heat by 

 the approach of the Hungarians, — a non- Aryan race 

 from Central Asia which has had a very different 

 career from that of the other non-Aryan invaders of 

 Europe. Of all such invaders these alone have estab- 

 lished a securely permanent foot-hold, unless we 

 count the cognate Finns, who were established in the 

 far North in prehistoric times. To keep in his mind 



Q 



