In holding that the Pelasgians were the base, so to speak, of the Greek nation, I mean to indicate it as a probable opinion, that they continued to form the mass of the inhabitants throughout all the changes of name which succeeded the period of their rule. But it would appear, that a succession of other more vigorous influences from the Hellic stock must have contributed far more powerfully in all respects, excepting as to numbers, to compose and shape the nationality of the people. The chief part of the Pelasgians of Attica may perhaps have lain among the 400,000 slaves, who formed the unheeded herd of its population; much as in Italy the serfs of the Greek colonists bore the Pelasgian name[388]. So large a body could scarcely have been formed in that limited territory, except out of the original inhabitants of the country. In early stages of society the bulk of society takes its impress from one, or from a few, of superior force: and the ruling families and tribes of a smaller, but more energetic and warlike race, finding for themselves a natural place at the head of societies already constituted, assume the undisputed direction of their fortunes, and become, by a spontaneous law, their sole representatives in the face of the world, and in the annals of its history. _Language of the Pelasgians._ We may, however, find no inconsiderable proof of the presence of a strong Pelasgian element in the Greek nation, in that portion of the evidence upon the case which is supplied by language. Those numerous and important words in the Latin tongue, which correspond with the words belonging to the same ideas in Greek, could only have come from the Pelasgian ancestry common to both countries; and, if coming from them, must demonstrate in the one case, as in the other, the strong Pelasgian tincture of the nation. And as the language of a country cannot be extensively impregnated in this manner, except either by numbers, or by political and social ascendancy (as was the case of the French tongue with the English), or by literary influence (as is now the case with us in respect to the Greek and Latin tongues), we must ask to which of these causes it was owing, that the Pelasgians so deeply marked the Greek language with the traces of their own tongue. It was not literary influence, for we may be sure that there existed none. It was not political ascendancy, for they were either enslaved, or at the least subordinate. It could only be the influence of their numbers, through which their manner of speech could in any measure hold its ground; and thus we arrive again at the conclusion, that they must have supplied the substratum of the nation.