but the merging of the old conditions of life into the new seems of
too little consequence to merit even an allusion. This state of
affairs, as said above, is caused by the annihilation, by the despotic
power of the central government, of that middle class which in times
of prosperity formed the sinews of the state. Of the other classes,
the privileged class, with the exception of the clergy, fell of course
with the government which supported it, and the common people
possessed no individuality, no power, and hardly any rights. Such,
then, was the condition of the towns at the time of the Lombard
invasion, a condition of such abasement and such degradation as
literally to have no history; a condition which indeed can truthfully
be said to merit none.

History tells the story of every great nation on the face of the earth
in three short words, growth, supremacy, decline. Vary the theme as
you may in the countless histories of countless peoples; subdivide the
course of its progress as you will, allowing for different local
causes and different local phenomena, the true philosophy of history
teaches that no real departure from this natural development is
possible. But what if by the violent intervention of some new and
entirely foreign force, another development and another life is given
to the inanimate ashes of the old? What if some nation, fresh from the
woods and fields of the childhood of its growth, come with
overwhelming yet preserving strength and infuse new blood into the
withered veins of its predecessor? This is the problem we now have
before us. How many writers of Italian history have entitled this
chapter in its development "A new Italian Nation formed"! It is not
the old glories of Rome, which had been Italy, returning; it is a new
Italian nation formed. Each word tells a story of its own. It is not
the old galvanized to a second life; it is the new superimposed,