ITALY PAST AND PRESENT.*

EvERY European, whether by domicile or by descent, has to own that Italy is "the mother of us all." It was into Rome that all the ancient civilisations, including the Hellenic, were gathered up and focussed. By Rome their heritage was first of all disseminated over Europe, and was then maintained for long ages against the barbarian flood. By the memory of the Eternal City, by the survival of the Roman language, by the few relics.of Imperial administration, a pale glimmer of civilisation was kept alight even in the gross darkness. The lamp of life was handed on somehow, though the runners were almost spent, and the flame was nearly extinguished. In due time it was replenished, and from its original source. Roman law was recovered, taste was revived, learning was re-established. All these in their beginnings were dne again to Italy, as' was the revival of European commerce. Italy herself, when her Renaissance was beginning to be more serious, when her best intellects were turning to science, was stricken down by ecclesiastical tyranny and foreign domination. She was dismembered, divided, emasculated politically and socially, sterilised intellectually, impoverished, misgoverned, enslaved. She became the "Niobe of Nations " ; • (I) TIN Last Days of Papal Nom. By B. de Cesare. London : A. Constable and Co. (128. 6d. net.)---(2) The Birth of Modern Italy. By Jessie White Mario. London : T. Fisher Unwin. [I28. 6d. net.)--(3) Napoleon HL and Italy. By R. H. Edleeton. Part I. 1830-60. Darlington: Bailey and Co.— (4) The :Poona of Leopardi. Edited by Francis oks. Manchester Manchester: at the University Press. Ds. 6d. net.]—(3) Italy To-Day. By Bolton King and Thomas Okey. London : J. Nisbet and Co. Se. net•I no longer a nation: a mere " geographical expression," in the terms of diplomatic insolence.

Now Italy has had a second revival. The Risorgimonto of the nineteenth century was not less surprising than the Renaissance of the twelfth ; it has been more sweeping in its effects, and let us hope it will be more permanent in its results. In the five books which are the occasion of this article some parts of the wonderful story are recalled to us. In The Last Days of Papal Rome Signor de Cesare has described the twenty years which closed the temporal power, from the return of Pius IX. in April, 1850, to the entry of Victor Emmanuel in September, 1870. The events and personages of that interesting time are presented with vivacity and charm by an eyewitness. The setting of the drama is the Papal administration ; the misconduct by ecclesiastics of affairs which, of all men, they are least competent to handle. Below was what clericals term "The Revolution "; in other words, the continual protest of the Romans against misgovernment, tho unquenchable resolve of the Italians to win their just freedom and to become a nation. Beyond the Papal States was the drama of the Second Empire, with the brilliant interlude of the war in Lombardy, Garibaldi's exploits in Sicily and Naples, and the inevitable formation of an Italian kingdom. The Papal Government must be pronounced a failure, even by favourable critics. By impartial judges it can only be described as an abomination. It was an outrage to justice, and it violated every principle of economics. Let us, however, be just in our severity. No doubt there were persons who prospered under the system, and who strove to perpetuate it at all costs for that reason ; yet the system itself was not bad in its intention, but good. It assumed the rule of Christ as a first and pervading principle of government; and the rule of Christ's Vicar was an attempt to carry out in practice the spirit and precepts of the GospeL Hence the profuse and reckless charity, with the consequent pauperisation, beggary, and idleness ; the neglect of material welfare and progress in the supposed interests of morality; the dislike of

genuine education and of progressive knowledge in the imaginary interests of faith; the incessant multiplication of

monks, nuns, clergy, churches, and every kind of religious institution. The wise maxim of the Preacher, "Be not righteous overmuch," was ignored in every department of State, and the subjects of the Papacy perished from a surfeit

of good things. They were sickened by a piety, true and false ; starved by an excessive charity; and exhausted by the fussy benevolence of a Government which certainly desired to be maternal. Jowett said of the Papal theology :— " I think it is one of the chief charges against it that it has defined, and sub-defined, and deduced, and sub-deduced, until religion has come to be something absolutely different from the re on of the Bible, not merely as to the things believed, but as to e mode of believing. Systematized theology they put in the place of the philosophy of religion."

"Logic," he says again, "is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge." It was this dodge which misled, not only the scholastic theologians, but the rulers of the Papal States, and so led on to the ruin of their subjects. As a consequence Rome, like all holy cities, was "incredibly filthy," as Lhasa was described to us more recently. The police regulations were atrocious, though every crime was judged leniently in

comparison with liberalism, which was the unpardonable sin. By those logical processes which Jowett castigates the temporal power was made the very foundation of belief. Starting with erroneous premisses, and pursuing a false login

to its inexorable conclusions, a Government which professed to be evangelical, which really meant to be kindly, became in practice an odious, corrupt, and brainless tyranny, and it perished in consequence. So dangerous is it to confuse the ideal and the real ; or to think that Christ's "kingdom," not of this world, but the intangible realm of symbols and aspirations, can be replaced by any Church or produced by any imperfect agencies. On the less serious side, many of the Papal regulations about theatres, plays, the censorship of books, and various social matters were most amusing in their results; and Signor de Cesare is an admirable story-teller.

Those who wish to be amused and instructed still further might turn to an older book, too much forgotten, Edmond About's La Question Romaine, where they will find the Pontifical government described in some of the wittiest chapters ever written, even in French; but no satire can be

more biting than the ideal society as sketched by Pius IX. in the Syllabus of 1864, and the reality as exhibited by the application of his principles in his own dominions.

Madame Mario gives us another aspect of the Italian question in The Birth of Modern Italy. She writes as the intimate friend of Mazzini, Garibaldi, and other makers of the new Italy. She was intimate with most of them, and shared many of their perils, both in conspiracy and war.

Most interesting is her account of Mazzini's life in London, and of England itself in the difficult year of the Reform Bill and the Charter. Garibaldi has been almost annexed by Mr. Trevelyan's brilliant pen ; but it is well to have other accounts of a hero who is always fascinating. And as Mazzini and Garibaldi were not always working cordially together, it is advisable to have the story as Madame Mario gives it from Mazzini's point of view. This is a most interesting book ; but, as we think, like Mazzini himself, it is not sufficiently appreciative of France, and certainly it is not just to Napoleon III.

In Napoleon III. and Italy Mr. Edleston tries to atone for this defect, and we welcome his effort in the interests of true history and of personal justice ; but as he writes from a strict and somewhat bounded Roman Catholic standpoint, he is involved in some difficulties and inconsistencies. Only the first part of his little history is published, extending from 1830 to 1860. It suggests some aspects of the Italian question and of Napoleon HI. which deserve studying, and if used with, and checked by, weightier authorities this volume may be serviceable.

Leopardi reminds us that the golden tongue of the Italians, though grievously impeded and often cruelly punished, was never wholly suppressed. " Thoughts that breathe and words that burn" came from the depths of their despair. Their poets and their great past kept the national sentiment alive when there was no nation. Leopardi was one of those who looked with unquenchable faith and hope towards a dawn which he did not live to see ; but his words enabled others to reach it. His text has been carefully edited and sufficiently explained by Mr. Brooks, and it is well printed by the University Press of Manchester.

Mr. Bolton King has put us all in his debt by his Life of Mazzini and his History of Italian Unity. In Italy To-Day he and Mr. Okey give us an account of the existing country for which so much has been done and suffered. The real is never quite the ideal. Italy has no doubt disappointed some of her friends, and fallen short of what her heroes expected.

But she has done wonders. If the past has its share of mistakes, and the present more than its share of difficulties, the future is filled with promise. When the kingdom of Italy succeeded to its full inheritance, everything had to be done from the beginning. More has been accomplished in forty years than some older countries achieved in many centuries. Education, thrift, industry, prosperity are all extending; and co-operation is doing wonders for Italian agriculture. When militarism is decried, let us remember that the Italian Army has been a most important factor in the national unification, and a wholesome instrument of virility. Electric discoveries have enabled Italy to utilise her enormous water-power in manufactures, which were impossible formerly through a want of fuel. Trade has pro- duced shipping, and shipping colonisation; and population grows. Few even of those who appreciate the treasures of Italy realise the burden which they throw on the Depart- ment of Fine Arts and Public Buildings; and in Rome itself more has been done since 1870 for the elucidation and preservation of antiquities than was accomplished by all the Popes.

As we look back over the long and troubled centuries, we may realise Newman's exhortation: "In the depths of desolation never to despair." He was speaking of the material winter, in his rhetorical discourse about " The Second Spring." We may apply his encouragement more widely. The Renaissance came inevitably, out of the very depths of the Middle Ages, and in spite of the iron theocracy of Innocent III. The Risorgimento came just as inevitably, in spite of ecclesiastical repression, native misrule, and foreign interference. Further, as we steep ourselves in the romance of the Bisorgimento, especially as its heroes are presented by the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, we cannot help contrasting those brave and stainless lives with the

stormy figures of the French Revolution. As that wise and fascinating biographer has reminded us in her Cavour-

"An acute Frenchman remarked during the Franco-German war that Prince Bismarck had taken Cavour's conception without what [sic] made it really great—liberty. Possibly that word may still prove of better omen to the re-birth of a nation than 'Blood and Iron."'

At any rate Bismarck has materialised Germany by lowering and narrowing it into Prussia ; and he more than any other man has laid on Europe the crushing and devastating burden of an armed peace, which is now overwhelming the other continents. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour delivered and moulded their own country without any unlawful aggression upon its neighbours. They have benefited Italy and inspired the whole human race, which is the better for their deeds and example. The country which can produce three such types in her hour of need may well continue to be an inspiration to the world. There are not three finer and truer heroes in Liu or in Plutarch, nor sc much heroic adventure in all the books of Tacitus. The majestic and beneficent Fax Augusta was maintained through. out the Roman world by some hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, and a navy in proportion. The ironical Prussian Peace threatens to lead to the bankruptcy or the overthrow of our existing civilisation.