What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new
cycle of culture, connected in several stages of its development
with the perishing or perished civilization of the Mediterranean
states, as this was connected with the primitive civilization of
the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to
traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in
full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods
of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative
effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the
material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps
also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of
contentment with the goal attained. And yet this goal will only
be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit,
and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which,
just when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever
set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.


Italy


Our aim is to exhibit the last act of this great historical drama,
to relate the ancient history of the central peninsula projecting
from the northern continent into the Mediterranean. It is formed
by the mountain-system of the Apennines branching off in a southern
direction from the western Alps. The Apennines take in the first
instance a south-eastern course between the broader gulf of the
Mediterranean on the west, and the narrow one on the east; and in the
close vicinity of the latter they attain their greatest elevation,
which, however, scarce reaches the line of perpetual snow, in