Avar, became so thoroughly intermixed with the Slav, and so completely impregnated with his spirit, that the kingdom which they established between the Danube and the Balkans about the end of the sixth century, and with which the Eastern Empire warred with varying fortunes for so long, must be looked upon as a Slavonic, not Turanian, element in Europe. It was during this and the next century that the Slavonic element became the predominating one, as it has ever since continued to be throughout the Balkan Peninsula, as far, at least, as race is concerned. Various tribes of the great Slav race, pressed out from that seething turmoil of peoples in the unknown regions of North-Eastern Europe, forced their way between Frank and Avar right down to the South of Greece. They formed, indeed, at the time no definite kingdom; they were sometimes tributaries to the Eastern Empire, sometimes at war with it; but whether at peace or at war, whether conquering or conquered, they made their racial influence felt everywhere throughout South-Eastern Europe. It is a hotly disputed question to this day how far the modern Greek of the mainland is Slav by race. Yet one other race must be mentioned. The Saracens, welded into a tremendous power by the inspiration of the Mahommedan Faith in the seventh century, began to press in the eastern border of the Empire more vigorously, and with more lasting effect than ever the Persian had done. During that century and the next they overran the whole of North Africa, separating it for ever from the Empire; indeed, from those days until our own, Africa disappears from European geography; they overflowed into Spain, drove back the West Goth into the extreme north-west corner of the Peninsula ; pressed into the heart of France, until at last their career of conquest was checked by Charles Martel at Tours in 732.

But it is not until the beginning of the ninth century that we arrive at any pause in this ebb and flow of races and peoples wherein we may take a steady survey of the map. Not indeed that this pause was of any long duration, but for a time the genius of Charles the Great stays the incessant movements of the last three centuries, and restores a simplicity to the divisions of Europe, of all Southern and Western Europe at least, which makes some sort of approach to their simplicity in the first century-a simplicity destined, however, to be a fresh starting-point for new complexities, the development of which has constituted the geographical history of Europe for the last 1,000 years. For by the beginning of the ninth century the Frank had so plainly demonstrated his superiority to the other Teutonic peoples that the Frankish king could assume something of the

position held by the Roman emperor in old days; the Burgundian power had been absorbed by the Frank, and the devouring Lombard had in turn been devoured by him; the Saxon, as far as the continent of Europe is concerned, had shared the same fate; the Avar had been crushed, and the advance of the Slav to the west had been stayed.

On Christmas Day, 800, Charles received the imperial crown at the hands of the Pope, and the Empire of the West, which had been in abeyance since the deposition of Romulus Augustus, was revived in a new form. This is the picture in broad outline which the map of Europe presents in the height of Charles's power. There are the three great civilised Empires: first, the Western Roman, which includes (to use again the phraseology of modern Europe) the whole of France, Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland, Germany up to the Oder, Austria, with Bohemia and Hungary up to the Danube, Northern and Central Italy, Corsica, and the Spanish March up to the Ebro. Secondly, the Eastern Roman Empire, including what is now Turkey in Europe, Greece, with all the eastern fringe of the Adriatic, Southern Italy and the islands of Sardinia and Sicily; while to the east it still extended over Asia Minor up to a line drawn from Trebizond to Tarsus. Thirdly, there was the emirate of Cordova, separated now from the caliphate of Bagdad, and embracing practically the whole Spanish peninsula.

As we have seen, the Slav swarmed in Greece and Macedonia, and owned but very doubtful allegiance to the Eastern Emperor, while higher up he occupied much debatable land between the Empires of the East and West, where his independent kingdom of Servia was soon to be. We have assigned Southern Italy to the East, but the emperor's writ would not have run far inland, for the old Lombard duchy of Beneventum still existed in semi-independence, disposed. to look for its over-lord, if anywhere, rather at Aächen than at Constantinople. Cooped up into the extreme north-west corner of Spain a remnant of the West Goths still held out against the Saracen, and was indeed even now beginning to recover something. of the land lost to Christendom.

Beyond these borders the divisions of Europe are still too indefinite to be marked with any precision upon the map. Different branches of the northern division of the great Slav family, cut off from their brethren in the south, occupy the central plain of Europe, under a vast variety of strange-sounding names. North and east of them Turanian hordes still wander free; while north-west of them the northern Teutons are beginning to shape themselves into organised

States in the peninsulas and islands which separate the Baltic from the Northern Ocean.

But it is with the break up of Charles's empire that the lines were at last laid down upon which the after-development of the European nationalities was to be carried out. After the great emperor's death a process of division, reunion, and redivision went on for many years amongst his sons and descendants, somewhat analogous to that which had gone on in the old Empire under the sons and successors of Constantine. Of the many treaties of partition which were effected the most important was that signed at Verdun in 843, of which Sir F. Palgrave has said: "The history of modern Europe is an exposition of the Treaty of Verdun." But it is not until the next century that what was to be the final outcome of this treaty and its various confirmations or modifications was really discernible. The century which passed between the time of Charles the Great and Otto the Great, and which saw the break up and reconstruction of the Empire of the West, was perhaps the most disastrous which Europe has ever passed through. The Northmen were not only founding Scandinavian kingdoms, but were sending out swarms of savage pirates, who were the scourge and terror of the whole coast and every navigable river of Western Europe. From the East came a scourge even more terrible in the shape of the Turanian Magyar, kinsman of the Hun and Avar of earlier times, and of the Turks of later; while the Saracen, checked in Spain, amply avenged himself at the expense of the Empire of the East by completely conquering the great islands of Sardinia and Sicily, and harrying all the southern coast of Italy. But by the end of the tenth century these disruptive processes, in the West at least, were drawing to a close, and reconstructive processes had well set in. By that time one may say that every modern European nationality (except the Turkish, if that has any right to be so called) had been planted in European soil; and the after-story of Europe is the story of the persistent growth and development, however slow it may, in many cases, have been, of germs which had already taken root by the year 1000. In the case of all the countries of Europe whose shores are washed by its western seas from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, the story of this development has in its broad outlines been a simple and steady one.

By this time the three great Scandinavian kingdoms, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, were well established, and more or less Christianised and civilised; and though the Norman was to provide rulers for many other lands he was not destined to convert any other territory into a Scandinavian kingdom.

By this time it was evident that the English kingdoms were to be consolidated into one, and that the English rule must spread over the British Islands; and though England might be conquered by Dane or Norman, yet England could never become a dependency of Denmark or Normandy, but that in England, Dane and Norman alike must become Englishmen.

By this time, also, it was evident that France and Germany were to be two; that, though the Frank had left his name for ever on France, it was not to be the German element, but the older Latinised Gallic element which was to be the predominating one in her history. When, in 987, a count of Paris took the title of king, modern France began her career. And though at the moment Hugh Capet's territory was by no means the greatest in what we know as France; though he was overshadowed by his powerful neighbour, the Duke of Normandy; yet from that time and from that centre the kingdom of France, however slowly and with whatever checks, went on extending its sway, and feeling for its boundaries to the sea, the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine. And in Spain by this time the petty Christian kingdoms of the North were fairly launched on their course of reconquest, a course to be completed four centuries later by the final expulsion of the Moor, and union of the Christian powers under Ferdinand and Isabella.

When, however, we pass to Central Europe, the story of the development of the modern nationalities is no such steady and unbroken one. Nevertheless here, too, we have a new beginning marked towards the end of the tenth century. When Otto the Great reconstituted the Empire of the West as the "Holy Roman Empire," and was crowned emperor in 962, “Germany may be said to have taken definitely the place which it was to hold in modern Europe." But Germany was not destined to know any such process of unification as France or England; the shadow of empire which hung upon her was enough to hinder that. As yet the names of the two powers which were destined to be the rivals in controlling her later development are scarcely discernible geographically. Yet the Mark of Austria (not yet a duchy) has its place now upon the map, and the house of Hapsburg, though not yet associated with Austria, is already in existence. Long time indeed was yet to pass before the house of Hapsburg came to be the great provider of emperors, and by imperial grants, or fortunate matrimonial alliances, came to make Austria the leading power in Germany. Long time, too, was to pass before the rival house of Hohenzollern became associated with Brandenburg, still longer before Hohenzollern and Brandenburg were associated

with Prussia. But the Hohenzollerns, too, in Otto's time are in existence, and Brandenburg and Prussia are names known to the map, though the latter only as yet applies to far distant Slavonic lands on the Baltic-outside the Empire and still heathen.

It has been reserved for our own century to see the final extinction of the Holy Roman Empire, in whose history Austria had so long played the leading part; and our own century, too, has seen the construction of a new German Empire under the leadership of Prussia, from which Austria has altogether withdrawn, to form, along with the allied kingdom of Hungary, a strange empire of her own over many and much-mixed races-Magyars, Teutons, and Slavs.

It is from Otto's time that that great kingdom of Hungary dates the true beginning of its history. The terrible Magyar, tamed by him, speedily became settled, civilised, and Christianised, and was thus prepared to afford, as it has, the solitary instance of a non-Aryan immigrant race maintaining its non-Aryan characteristics, and yet assuming a lasting place, and playing an honourable part, amongst the modern peoples of Europe.

In Otto's time there was still a remnant, and an important one, left in the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles, of the great middle kingdom of Lotharingia between Eastern and Western Franks which had been formed at the partition of Verdun; but it was destined for the most part to be absorbed in France, and is only represented on the modern map by Switzerland; though Belgium and the Netherlands may also be regarded as fragments of the original Lotharingia whose name still lives in Lorraine. The unification of Italy was still more impeded than that of Germany by the idea of empire, for both East and West looked to her as the fount of imperial authority, and either Empire still called itself Roman, though one was now as distinctively German as the other was Greek. Italy was torn asunder; all the south was nominally part of the Eastern Empire, though, as we have seen, Sicily and Sardinia had been rent away by the Saracens, and the allegiance of the duchy of Beneventum was of so doubtful a sort; while all the north, except Venice and Ravenna and a thin line of coast, was part of the Western Empire. Yet now, in the north at all events, the idea of a separate Italian kingdom, partially realised as it had been in Lombard times, was revived; and when German emperors descended from the Alps to claim the allegiance of Italy and to receive the crown of empire at Rome, they had to submit to be crowned again at Milan with the iron crown of Lombardy, as being not only lords of the empire but kings also of a distinct kingdom of Italy. And though Italy was to wait so many centuries, even to our own times, for the realisation of