be destroyed after the war, I don't doubt; but what does it matter?"


II

The political purpose of literature in Italy had become conscious long
before Guerrazzi's time; but it was the motive of poetry long before
it became conscious. When Alfieri, for example, began to write, in the
last quarter of the eighteenth century, there was no reason to suppose
that the future of Italy was ever to differ very much from its past.
Italian civilization had long worn a fixed character, and Italian
literature had reflected its traits; it was soft, unambitious,
elegant, and trivial. At that time Piedmont had a king whom she loved,
but not that free constitution which she has since shared with
the whole peninsula. Lombardy had lapsed from Spanish to Austrian
despotism; the Republic of Venice still retained a feeble hold upon
her wide territories of the main-land, and had little trouble in
drugging any intellectual aspiration among her subjects with the
sensual pleasures of her capital. Tuscany was quiet under the
Lorrainese dukes who had succeeded the Medici; the little states of
Modena and Parma enjoyed each its little court and its little Bourbon
prince, apparently without a dream of liberty; the Holy Father ruled
over Bologna, Ferrara, Ancona, and all the great cities and towns of
the Romagna; and Naples was equally divided between the Bourbons and
the bandits. There seemed no reason, for anything that priests or
princes of that day could foresee, why this state of things should not
continue indefinitely; and it would be a long story to say just why it
did not continue. What every one knows is that the French revolution
took place, that armies of French democrats overran all these languid
lordships and drowsy despotisms, and awakened their subjects, more or