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 insurmountable 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 Chechs, Moravians, and Slovaks of Bohemia and the northern Carpathians from their kinsmen, the Yugo-Slavs ("Southern Slavs") of Servia and the other now Slavonised Balkan lands. These Yugo-Slavs are in their turn severed by the Rumanians of Neo-Latin speech from their northern and eastern brethren, the Ruthenians, 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 consequences 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 sides of the Atlantic and in the Austral lands. From this point of view the ethnologist may unreservedly accept Ehrenreich's trenchant remark that "the nation stands and falls with its speech[736]." FOOTNOTES: [671] _Natural History of Man_, 1865 ed. pp. 185-6. [672] _Science of Language_, 1879, II. p. 190. [673] _The Heart of a Continent,_ 1896, p. 118. [674] O. Peschel, _Races of Man,_ 1894, p. 380. [675] See Ch. de Ujfalvy, _Les Aryens_, etc., 1896, p. 25. Reference should perhaps be also made to E. H. Parker's theory (_Academy_, Dec. 21, 1895) that the Turki cradle lay, not in the Altai or Altun-dagh ("Golden Mountains") of North Mongolia, but 1000 miles farther south in the "Golden Mountains" (_Kin-shan_) of the present Chinese province of Kansu. But the evidence relied on is not satisfactory, and indeed in one or two important instances is not evidence at all. [676] J. B. Bury, _English Historical Rev.,_ July, 1897. [677] _L'Anthropologie,_ VI. No. 3. [678] T. Peisker, "The Asiatic Background," _Cambridge Medieval History,_ Vol. I. 1911, p. 354. [679] _Academy,_ Dec. 21, 1895, p. 548. [680] "Budini Gelonion urbem ligneam habitant; juxta Thyssagetae _Turcaeque_ vastas silvas occupant, alunturque venando" (I. 19, p. 27 of Leipzig ed. 1880). [681] "Dein Tanain amnem gemino ore influentem incolunt Sarmatae ... Tindari, Thussagetae, _Tyrcae_, usque ad solitudines saltuosis convallibus asperas, etc." (Bk. VIII. 7, Vol. I. p. 234 of Berlin ed. 1886). The variants _Turcae_ and _Tyrcae_ are noteworthy, as indicating the same vacillating sound of the root vowel (_u_ and _y = ue_) that still persists.