acceptance of the task, accomplished in our days, of freeing Italy from
foreign tyranny and forming a single nation out of many component
elements. Those component elements by their diversity had conferred
luster on the race in the Middle Ages, by their jealousies had wrecked
its independence in the Renaissance, and by their weakness had left it
at the period of the Counter-Reformation a helpless prey to Papal and
Spanish despotism.

The leveling down of the component elements of the Italian race beneath
a common despotism, which began in the period I have chosen for this
work, was necessary perhaps before Italy could take her place as a
united nation gifted with constitutional self-government and
independence. Except, therefore, for the sufferings and the humiliations
inflicted on her people; except for their servitude beneath the most
degrading forms of ecclesiastical and temporal tyranny; except for the
annihilation of their beautiful Renaissance culture; except for the
depression of arts, learning, science, and literature, together with the
enfeeblement of political energy and domestic morality; except for the
loathsome domination of hypocrites and persecutors and informers; except
for the Jesuitical encouragement of every secret vice and every servile
superstition which might emasculate the race and render it subservient
to authority;--except for these appalling evils, we have no right
perhaps to deplore the settlement of Italy by Charles V. in 1530, or the
course of subsequent events. For it is tolerably certain that some such
leveling down as then commenced was needed to bring the constituent
States of Italy into accord; and it is indubitable, as I have had
occasion to point out, that the political force which eventually
introduced Italy into the European system of federated nations, was
determined in its character, if not created, then. None the less, the
history of this period (1530-1600) in Italy is a prolonged, a solemn, an