remembered that they were not a new people, needing concentration to
secure their bare existence. Even during the great days of ancient Rome
they had not been what we are wont to call a nation, but a confederacy
of municipalities governed and directed by the mistress of the globe.
When Rome passed away, the fragments of the body politic in Italy,
though rudely shaken, retained some portion of the old vitality that
joined them to the past. It was to the past rather than the future that
the new Italians looked; and even as they lacked initiative forces in
their literature, so in their political systems they ventured on no
fresh beginning. Though Rome herself was ruined, the shadow of the name
of Rome, the mighty memory of Roman greatness, still abode with them.
Instead of a modern capital and a modern king, they had an idea for
their rallying-point, a spiritual city for their metropolis. Nor was
there any immediate reason why they should have sacrificed their local
independence in order to obtain the security afforded by a sovereign. It
was not till a later epoch that Italy learned by bitter experience that
unity at any cost would be acceptable, face to face with the organized
armies of modern Europe. But when the chance of securing that safeguard
was offered in the Middle Ages, it must have been bought by subjection
to foreigners, by toleration of feudalism, by the extinction of Roman
culture in the laws and customs of barbarians. Thus it is not too much
to say that the Italians themselves rejected it. Moreover, the problem
of unifying Italy in a monarchy was never so practically simple as that
of forming nations out of the Teutonic tribes. Not only was the instinct
of clanship absent, but before the year 800 all attempts to establish a
monarchical state were thwarted by the still formidable proximity of
the Greek Empire and by the growing power of ecclesiastical Rome. We
have seen how the Goths erred by submitting-to the Empire and merging
their authority in a declining organization. We have seen again how the
Lombards erred by adopting Catholic Christianity and thus entangling