the present kingdom of Italy were laid. Carlo Alberto had abdicated on
that battle-field where an Austrian victory over the Sardinians sealed
the fate of the Italian states allied with him, and his son, Victor
Emmanuel, succeeded him. As to what took place ten years later, when
the Austrians were finally expelled from Lombardy, and the transitory
sovereigns of the duchies and of Naples flitted for good, and the
Pope's dominion was reduced to the meager size it kept till 1871, and
the Italian states were united under one constitutional king--I need
not speak.

In this way the governments of Italy had been four times wholly
changed, and each of these changes was attended by the most marked
variations in the intellectual life of the people; yet its general
tendency always continued the same.


III

The longing for freedom is the instinct of self-preservation in
literature; and, consciously or unconsciously, the Italian poets of
the last hundred years constantly inspired the Italian people with
ideas of liberty and independence. Of course the popular movements
affected literature in turn; and I should by no means attempt to
say which had been the greater agency of progress. It is not to be
supposed that a man like Alfieri, with all his tragical eloquence
against tyrants, arose singly out of a perfectly servile society. His
time was, no doubt, ready for him, though it did not seem so; but, on
the other hand, there is no doubt that he gave not only an utterance
but a mighty impulse to contemporary thought and feeling. He was in
literature what the revolution was in politics, and if hardly any