AN HISTORICAL SKETCH OF GREEK. 1 5 very existence of the Orthodox Church has been the reason that living Greek was considered as a new language. The Byzantines, and the people depending on them, were completely sep- arated from the western European nations in con- sequence of religious and political events. The fact is that the Byzantines, their heirs, and their descendants, even to this very day, do not con- sider themselves as belonging to Europe. We notice this in every newspaper and in daily con- versation. When Greeks speak of Germans, French, and English, they name them, as in con- trast to themselves, Europeans. The Orthodox Church forms a world of its own ; it is a complex of nations and states, some of them half civilized, living between civilized Europe and barbaric Asia. This multiform composition of nations, which in the past has been the bulwark against Asiatic barbarism, seems to be destined for the future to be the medium of bringing civilization from Europe into Asia. Up to date it has been little known, but much misrepresented. This seclusion has been the impediment to the scien- tific study of the middle and new Greek. In consequence of the separation of the Occi- dental from the Oriental church — that is, the Orthodox from the Roman Catholic — the history
