PREFACE


The old figure of speech 'in the fulness of time' embodies a truth too
often forgotten. History knows nothing of spontaneous generation; the
chain of cause and effect is unbroken, and however modest be the
scale on which an historical work is cast, the reader has a right to
ask that it should give him some idea, not only of what happened, but
of why it happened. A catalogue of dates and names is as meaningless
as the photograph of a crowd. In the following retrospect, I have
attempted to trace the principal factors that worked towards Italian
unity. The Liberation of Italy is a cycle waiting to be turned into an
epic.

In other words, it presents the appearance of a series of detached
episodes, but the parts have an intimate connection with the whole,
which, as time wears on, will constantly emerge into plainer light.
Every year brings with it the issue of documents, letters, memoirs,
that help to unravel the tangled threads in which this subject has
been enveloped, and which have made it less generally understood than
the two other great struggles of the century, the American fight for
the Union, and the unification of Germany.

I cannot too strongly state my indebtedness to the voluminous
literature which has grown up in Italy round the _Risorgimento_ since
its completion; yet it must not be supposed that the witness of
contemporaries published from hour to hour, in every European tongue,
while the events were going on, has become or will ever become