The proximity and parallelism of the coasts of two continents confer upon the Balkan peninsula an advantage unrivalled, perhaps, throughout the world. It is separated from Asia only by the narrow channel which joins the Black Sea to the Ægean Sea: this channel is an ocean highway, and yet forms no serious obstacle to the migration of nations from continent to continent. If the Black Sea were larger than it is at present; if it still formed _one_ sea with the Caspian, and extended far into Asia, as it did in a past age, then Constantinople would necessarily become the great centre of the ancient world. That proud position was actually held by it a thousand years ago, and even if it should never recover it, its geographical position alone insures to it an importance for all time to come. If the city were to be razed to day, it would arise again to-morrow at some other spot in the neighbourhood. In the dawn of history powerful Ilion kept watch at the entrance of the Dardanelles: it survives in the city on the Bosphorus; and had there been no Byzantium, its mantle would have descended upon some other town in the same locality. We know the part played by ancient Greece in the history of human culture. Macedonia and Thracia, the two other countries bordering upon the Ægean, have played their part too. It was those provinces which, after the invasion of the Persians, gave birth to the movement of reaction which led the armies of Alexander to the Euphrates and Indus. The power of the Romans survived there for a thousand years after Rome itself had fallen, and the precious germs of civilisation, which at a later period regenerated Western Europe, were nurtured there. It is true, alas ! that the Turk has put a stop to every enterprise of a civilising nature. These conquerors of Turanian race were carried into the Balkan peninsula in the course of a general migration of nations towards the west, which went on for three thousand years, and was attended by perpetual broils. It is now five hundred years since the Turks obtained a footing in the peninsula, and for more than four hundred years they have been its masters, and during that long period the old Roman empire of the East has been severed, as it were, from the rest of Europe. The normal progress of these highly favoured countries has been interrupted by incessant wars between Christians and Mohammedans, by the decay of the nations conquered or enslaved by the Turks, and by the heedless fatalism of the masters of the country. But the time is approaching when that important portion of Europe will resume the position due to it amongst the countries of the earth.