The Epirots are a population of Albanian race, and they still speak an Albanian dialect in their homes; while the women and children, at any rate, often know no other language. But somewhat over a century ago the political organism created by the remarkable personality of Ali Pasha in the hinterland of the Adriatic coast, and the relations of Great Britain and France with this new principality in the course of their struggle for the Mediterranean, began to awaken in the Epirots a desire for civilization. Their Albanian origin opened to them no prospects, for the race had neither a literature nor a common historical tradition; and they accordingly turned to the Greeks, with whom they were linked in religion by membership of the Orthodox Church, and in politics by subjection to Ali’s Government at Yannina, which had adopted Greek as its official language. They had appealed to the right quarter; for we have seen how Greek culture accumulated a store of latent energy under the Turkish yoke, and was expending it at this very period in a vigorous national revival. The partially successful War of Liberation in the ‘twenties of the nineteenth century was only the political manifestation of the new life. It has expressed itself more typically in a steady and universal enthusiasm for education, which throughout the subsequent generations of political stagnation has always opened to individual Greeks commercial and professional careers of the greatest brilliance, and often led them to spend the fortunes so acquired in endowing the nation with further educational opportunities. Public spirit is a Greek virtue. There are few villages which do not possess monuments of their successful sons, and a school is an even commoner gift than a church; while the State has supplemented the individual benefactor to an extent remarkable where public resources are so slender. The school-house, in fact, is generally the most prominent and substantial building in a Greek village, and the advantage offered to the Epirots by a _rapprochement_ with the Greeks is concretely symbolized by the Greek schools established to-day in generous numbers throughout their country.