ITALY THROUGH THE AGES.*
IN writing a spirited, coherent and accurate history of Italy, from the third century to our own day, within some five hundred pages, Mrs. Trevelyan has accomplished a feat which we should have deemed hardly possible, in view of the fascinating com- plexity of the subject. Her book is intensely interesting, and We commend it heartily to the many readers who would like to know more about our Italian ally and friend. For Italian policy, whether domestic or foreign, cannot be understood without reference to Italian history, and the full significance of the national feeling in regard to many questions may only be appreciated by those who realize the essential continuity of Italian traditions from the time of the Roman Empire. The question of Temporal Power, for example, involves a study of the whole period from Constantine's alleged "donation." The question of Fiume and Dalmatia has to be elucidated by refer- ence to such remote events as the extirpation of the Slav pirates by Venice round about the year 1000, so that the old Latin coast towns might resume their peaceful commerce. The provincial jealousies which still play their part in Italy are only comprehensible to those who understand how old and deep were the divisions before Napoleon swept over the Penin- sula, as Theodoric the Goth had done thirteen centuries earlier. Above all, we shall unwittingly wound Italian sentiment if we persist in thinking of Italy as a comparatively new State. It is true enough that Italy was for ages a geographical expre,s. sion, but the Italian people was conscious of itself, as against the foreigner, and we should do very wrong not to recognize its immense contributions to Western thought and to Western civilization throughout many centuries. Italy was slow to succeed in establishing the nation-state, but she was ahead even of England in showing how provinces or city-states should be administered on modern lines, as in sixteenth-century Florence or eighteenth-century Naples. We are glad to find that Mrs. Trevelyan is broad-minded enough not to lose interest in Italy after the Renaissance, and that she points out the better as well as the worse aspects of Italian life- during the three compara- tively peaceful centuries of Spanish or Anstrian domination.
Nothing is more astonishing in Italian history than the multitude of remarkable men and women whom the nation produced generation after generation. We know of no other country in which there was such an abundance of strong individuality. Mrs. Trevelyan has mentioned only a small proportion of the famous names, and yet her pages abound in personal references. The historical causes which led to the rise of innumerable city-states, especially in the north and centre of the peninsula, account for the importance of individuals. When men had to seek protection from one foreign invader after another within the walls of a town, and when each town was at feud with its neighbours, the personal character, of the civic rulers was all-important. Nevertheless, it says much for the intense vitality of the Italian stock that it could produce, century after century, so many men and women of uncommon force and talent. The moralist must often deplore their crimes • A Short Hietoty of the Italian People. By Janet Penrose Ttevelyan. London: Putnam. [25s. net.]
and vices, but he cannot deny their attractiveness. Nor is it certain that the great and good men, like St. Francis or Arnold of Brescia or Savonarola, are outnumbered by the monsters of evil, like some of the Popes or the Visconti or Caesar Borgia. The good and the bad are inextricably mingled in the marvellous pageant of mediaeval Italy, where life was more intense and more romantic than it has perhaps ever been at any other epoch in Western Europe, save during the French Revolution. We must congratulate Mrs. Trevelyan on the skill with which she has indicated the main lines of that tangled web of diplomatic and commercial and personal intrigue, complicated always by the persistent striving of the Popes for more and more temporal power and by the interference of Germans and Angevins, Aragonese, French, Castilians and Turks. The tragic moment in Italy's history came when, after interminable efforts, the innumerable little potentates and towns were marshalled under one or other of the five powers—the Papacy, Venice, Florence, Milan and Naples—in the middle of the fifteenth century. If they could have moved a stage further and federated or coalesced, Italy might have been spared four centuries of foreign domination. But their jealousies forbade, and no one of them was strong enough to control the other four without the fatal aid of an invader. Italy had to pay dearly for her lesson on the importance of unity.
Napoleon's great services to Italy are rightly emphasized by Mrs. Trevelyan. The conqueror expedited by generations the work of liberation. When the Austrians were expelled and the princely houses faded away before the French legions, Italians were shown what a United Italy might mean. The Congress of Vienna could not be expected to recognize the importance to Europe of such a reversal of history, but it failed to undo what Napoleon had done. All Italian patriots henceforth knew what they must strive for, and the restored dynasties existed merely on sufferance, with the support of Austrian bayonets. Some confusion was caused by the division of opinion between those who with Mazzini wanted a United and Republican Italy and those who with Cavour desired a United Italy under the old dynasty of Savoy. But both parties were resolutely determined to effect a union, and when Mazzini lost the favour of moderate men, the cause was soon gained. We recommend those who idly talk of Italian " Imperialism " to read the later chapters in this book and to see how grudgingly Italy's just claims to the outlying Italian lands were treated, even as late as 1870. The Hapsburgs might still be ruling in Vienna if they had had the sense to yield the indubitably Italian provinces of the Trentino and Istria as well as Venetia. By clinging to these and by pursuing a petty anti-Italian policy they alienated their neighbours and yet failed to conciliate the Slays on the Adriatic Coast whom they favoured as against Italy. The Hapsburgs have lost all because they adhered to the methods of the sixteenth century, and no rational man can pity them. Mrs. Trevelyan does well also to remark on the terrible confusion which prevailed half a century ago when Italy at last attained union. Only those who know the poverty and anarchy that prevailed in Naples and the Papal States at that time can appreciate the progress that has been made since then. It is most unfair to blame the Italian people and their politicians for not having eradicated in a generation or two all the evils which had grown up through centuries of bad government. The wonder is that so much has been done.
Let us add that this excellent book is well illustrated with portraits and maps, and that it has a useful bibliography and a good index. There are a few misprints, which may be put right in a second edition.
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