CHAPTER II


THE NATIONAL IDEA IN EUROPE, 1789-1914

Europe, what of the night?--
Ask of heaven, and the sea,
And my babes on the bosom of me,
Nations of mine, but ungrown.
There is one who shall surely requite
All that endure or that err:
She can answer alone:
Ask not of me, but of her.

Liberty, what of the night?--
I feel not the red rains fall,
Hear not the tempest at all,
Nor thunder in heaven any more.
All the distance is white
With the soundless feet of the sun.
Night, with the woes that it wore,
Night is over and done.

A.C. SWINBURNE, _A Watch in the Night._

Sixty-two years ago reaction reigned supreme in Europe after the great
national and social uprisings of 1848, and England looked on passively
while the hopes of freedom were crushed in Bohemia, Hungary, and Italy.
Mazzini, the noblest of Italian patriots, the most prophetic soul among
nineteenth-century nationalists, selected this moment of profound despair