The Grecian language still lives, the tongue of a spirited and rising modern people. But the Greeks of the classic period--the Hellenes of literature, art and philosophy--will never be known again. Says Mr. W. H. Ireland: 'Most of the old Greek race has been swept away, and the country is now inhabited by persons of Slavonic descent. Indeed, there is a strong ground for the statement that there was more of the old heroic blood of Hellas in the Turkish army of Edhem Pasha than in the soldiers of King George.' The modern Greek has been called a "Byzantinized Slav." King George himself and Constantine his son are only aliens placed on the Grecian throne to suit the convenience of outer powers, being in fact descendants of tribes which to the ancient Greeks were merely barbarians. It is maintained that the modern Greeks are in the main the descendants of the population that inhabited Greece in the earlier centuries of Byzantine rule. Owing to the operation of various causes, historical, social and economic, that population was composed of many heterogeneous elements and represented in very limited degree the race which repulsed the Persians and built the Parthenon. The internecine conflicts of the Greek communities, wars with foreign powers, and the deadly struggles of factions in the various cities had to a large extent obliterated the old race of free citizens by the beginning of Roman period. The extermination of the Plataeans by the Spartans and of the Melians by the Athenians during the Peloponnesian war, the proscription of the Athenian citizens after the war, the massacre of the Coreyrean oligarchs by the democratic party, the slaughter of the Thebans by Alexander and of the Corinthians by Mummius are among the more familiar instances of the catastrophes which overtook the civic element in the Greek cities. The void can only have been filled from the ranks of the metics or resident aliens and of the descendants of the far more numerous slave population. In the classic period four fifths of the population of Attica were slaves; of the remainder, half were meties In A.D. 100 only three thousand free arm-bearing men were in Greece. (James D. Bourchier.) The constant little struggles of the Greeks among themselves made no great showing as to numbers compared to other wars, but they wiped out the most valuable people, the best blood, the most promising heredity on earth. This cost the world more than the killing of millions of barbarians. In two centuries there were born under the shadow of the Parthenon more men of genius than the Roman Empire had in its whole existence. Yet this empire included all the civilized world, even Greece herself. (La Pouge.)