Of course, Ferrara was not incorporated into a living nation against
her will, and I therefore marveled the more that she had become a
portion of the present kingdom of Italy. The poor little State had
its day long before ours; it had been a republic, and then subject to
lords; and then, its lords becoming dukes, it had led a life of gayety
and glory till its fall, and given the world such names and memories
as had fairly won it the right to rest forever from making history.
Its individual existence ended with that of Alfonso II., in 1597, when
the Pope declared it reverted to the Holy See; and I always fancied
that it must have received with a spectral, yet courtly kind of
surprise, those rights of man which bloody-handed France distributed
to the Italian cities in 1796; that it must have experienced a ghostly
bewilderment in its rapid transformation, thereafter, under Napoleon,
into part of the Cispadan Republic, the Cisalpine Republic, the
Italian Republic, and the Kingdom of Italy, and that it must have sunk
back again under the rule of the Popes with gratitude and relief at
last--as phantoms are reputed to be glad when released from haunting
the world where they once dwelt. I speak of all this, not so much from
actual knowledge of facts as from personal feeling; for it seems to
me that if I were a city of the past, and must be inhabited at all,
I should choose just such priestly domination, assured that though
it consumed my substance, yet it would be well for my fame and final
repose. I should like to feel that my old churches were safe from
demolition: that my old convents and monasteries should always shelter
the pious indolence of friars and nuns. It would be pleasant to have
studious monks exploring quaint corners of my unphilosophized annals,
and gentle, snuff-taking abbés writing up episodes in the history of
my noble families, and dedicating them to the present heirs of past
renown; while the thinker and the reviewer should never penetrate
my archives. Being myself done with war, I should be glad to have my