richest in precious memories and splendid hopes, would be the centre
of an iron network uniting the whole peninsula. Some well-intentioned
patriots objected to the increase of railway communication with
Austria from the fear that it would strengthen her military and
political hold over her Italian provinces. Cavour answered that the
great events at hand could not be delayed by the shortening of the
number of hours between Vienna and Milan. On the other hand, when the
relations arising out of conquest were replaced by those of friendship
and equity, rapid communication would promote the moral and
intellectual intercourse, "which, more than any one, we desire,"
between grave and profound Germany and intelligent Italy. In these
pages Cavour foreshadowed the boring of the Alps and the German
alliance, two facts which then seemed equally improbable.

The man was made; he waited for his opportunity. What if it never
came? Can we conceive Cavour's immense energy limited to a rice-field?
Are there really men whom their lot forbids--

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes?

The prophet may cry aloud in the desert, the scientific discoverer may
guess at truths which his age rejects, but the total waste of such a
force as the mind of Cavour seems less easy to imagine than that his
appearance was a sign that the times were ripe for him.