feeling of nationality, and the acceptance of a common language as the
outward badge of nationality, had no small share. Poets sang of language
as the badge of national union; statesmen made it the badge, so far as
political considerations did not lead them to do anything else. The
revived kingdom of Italy is very far from taking in all the speakers of
the Italian tongue. Lugano, Trent, Aquileia--to take places which are
clearly Italian, and not to bring in places of more doubtful
nationality, like the cities of Istria and Dalmatia--form no part of the
Italian political body, and Corsica is not under the same rule as the
other two great neighboring islands. But the fact that all these places
do not belong to the Italian body at once suggests the twofold question,
why they do not belong to it, and whether they ought not to belong to
it. History easily answers the first question; it may perhaps also
answer the second question in a way which will say Yes as regards one
place and No as regards another. Ticino must not lose her higher
freedom; Trieste must remain the needful mouth for southern Germany;
Dalmatia must not be cut off from the Slavonic mainland; Corsica would
seem to have sacrificed national feeling to personal hero-worship. But
it is certainly hard to see why Trent and Aquileia should be kept apart
from the Italian body. On the other hand, the revived Italian kingdom
contains very little which is not Italian in speech. It is perhaps by a
somewhat elastic view of language that the dialect of Piedmont and the
dialect of Sicily are classed under one head; still, as a matter of
fact, they have a single classical standard, and they are universally
accepted as varieties of the same tongue. But it is only in a few Alpine
valleys that languages are spoken which, whether Romance or Teutonic,
are in any case not Italian. The reunion of Italy, in short, took in all
that was Italian, save when some political cause hindered the rule of
language from being followed. Of any thing not Italian by speech so
little has been taken in that the non-Italian parts of Italy,