There is no nation, as far as history has left us the means of judging, that has so little changed in a long course of ages as the Greeks. It may be sufficient, without adverting to the less certain indications of manners or physical aspect, to remark, that the Greeks still employ the same character in writing which was used in the remotest age of their history; that their language has received only such corruptions as cannot fail, for the greater part, to fall into disuse, as literary education and a familiarity with their ancient writers shall be diffused among them; that a great number of places in Greece, as well as of the productions of nature, are known by the same names which were attached to them in the most ancient times; and that this language and this people still occupy the same country, which was always peculiarly considered among them as Hellas, or Greece properly so called, namely, the south-eastern extremity of Europe from the Taenarian promontory to upper Macedonia, together with the islands and coasts of the Ægæan sea.

Nor are their eastern neighbours much altered, when we consider the state of Asia in comparison with that great change which civilization has effected in the human species, and on the surface of the earth throughout the greater part of Europe.