[Illustration: WALLACHIANS (VALAKHS).] Even in the seventeenth century the language spoken by the Rumanians was treated as a rural dialect, and Slavonian was used in churches and courts of justice. At the present day, on the contrary, Rumanian patriots are anxious to purge their language of all Servian words, and of Greek and Turkish expressions introduced during the dominion of the Osmanli. The “Romans” of the Danube are endeavouring to polish their tongue, so that it may rank with Italian and French. They have abandoned the Russian characters, and their vocabulary is being continually enriched by new words derived from the Latin. The idiom spoken in the towns, which was the most impure {163} formerly, in consequence of the influx of strangers, has now become more Latin than that spoken in the country. There are, however, about two hundred words not traceable to any known tongue, and these are supposed to be a remnant of the ancient Dacian spoken at the period of the Roman invasion. The Wallachian differs, moreover, from the Latin tongues of Western Europe by always placing the article and the demonstrative pronoun after the noun. The same rule obtains in Albanian and Bulgarian, and Miklosich is probably right when he looks upon this as a feature of the ancient language of the aborigines. These niceties, however, are altogether unnoticed by the mass of the people. The Rumanian peasant is proud of the ancient conquerors of his country, and looks upon himself as the descendant of the patricians of Rome. Several of his customs, at the birth of children, betrothals, or burials, recall those observed by the Romans, and the dance of the _Calushares_, it is said, may be traced back to the earliest Italian settlers. The Wallachian is fond of talking about Father Trajan, to whom he attributes all those feats which in other countries are associated with Hercules, Fingal, or Ossian. Many a mountain valley has been rent asunder by Trajan’s powerful hand; and the avalanches descending from the hills are spoken of as Trajan’s thunder. The Rumanian completely ignores Getæ, Dacians, or Goths, though in the hills we still meet with tall men having blue eyes and long flaxen hair, who are probably descended from the aboriginal inhabitants of the country.