first, business men were not forthcoming. The first epoch closed in 1870; the second, and far greater, task had to be faced. This task was nothing less than to make the nation; to undertake huge administrative labours without administrators, and to carry out great public works by the agency of men wholly strange to sound traditions of public life. This explains why the article 'L' Italia non farà da se' was a false prophecy. The statistics were correct; and they lied as only statistics can lie; they even corresponded at the moment with the facts of life; but the facts were the facts of a transitory stage, of the nation's life and not the symptoms of its permanent condition.

Leaving these considerations for the moment let us very briefly consider the heroic period; we shall then be able to understand the well-nigh overwhelming difficulties which beset the Monarchy after 1870. Radetzky could not live for ever; Ward was summarily dismissed by the Duchess Regent, and died four years later: the rise and collapse of the farcical Roman Republic was a set-off to these advantages. The year succeeding Ward's death saw the alliance with Imperial France; and the campaign of Solferino was followed, as we all remember, by the downfall of the Duchies and the disappearance of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. In another six years came the acquisition of Venice, and in yet another four the entry of the Italian troops into Rome. These epochs of intense and dramatic life lasted a very short time. A young officer who smelt powder for the first time on the field of Novara would hardly have been in command of a regiment by September 1870.

These years are the record of a number of lugubrious prophecies, and of their falsification. Thus it was said that the House of Savoy 'would never' recover from Novara, or supplant the Austrians, or absorb Central Italy. Even Cavour was concerned at the rapidity with which his master's responsibilities increased when Naples and Sicily were added to the Italian kingdom. Savoy rose easily to this as to every other responsibility. In no single case were the prophets of evil so vociferous as in the case of Rome. They shouted defiance. 'Never' would the House of Savoy 'dare' to go to Rome. Never' could they hope to occupy the 'Eternal City,' still less to make it their own. The House of Savoy dares everything. To Rome the King went, strong in his courage; and not even the traditional and personal piety of the Royal House was allowed to interfere with the fulfilment of an historical necessity: even the Vatican thundered in vain.

Events of this immeasurable importance have one result they produce heroes; they also produce a number of people who are not at all heroic but who may catch the heroic pose for a time. After 1870 what Italy needed was a large supply of business men and administrators. Heroes had been needed to make noble speeches and conquer kingdoms, but when all the kingdoms were conquered,

and the fewer speeches that might be made the better, it became apparent that Italy's hard times were before her.

To begin with, 'Italy,' though no longer a bare 'geographical expression,' needed making. The Piedmontese had to learn that he was only a favoured subject, not the conqueror of a subject people. The Neapolitan had to learn that he was an Italian first and a Neapolitan afterwards. The most potent instrument to this end was the army. A civilian does well to keep silence about military matters; but even a civilian may claim to appreciate the educational influence of a standing army on a civilian population; and the more of us who publicly repudiate the pernicious-nay, poisonous-nonsense talked about 'militarism' and a 'blood-tax' the better. The great standing army of Italy, then, has been the most potent of all beneficent instruments in the making of the Italian people. That it was too large' is the opinion of many soldiers who had opportunities of observing it at close quarters; and that opinion one naturally accepts from the military point of view, with the reservation that in point of fact Italy did not think it too large. As an instrument of education it has been, and is, admirable, and can hardly have been too large.

The navy has also been criticised adversely; but as the details of maritime warfare are even more intricate than those of an army one does not pretend to follow them. At least, however, one can take the statesman's point of view, although it is not 'obvious' and in fact requires a good deal of study and patience. From the statesman's point of view, then, it is clear that, after 1870, every form of activity needed to be cherished. Much of the Italian population consists of seafaring folk, who learn more easily at sea than anywhere else that they are Italian subjects, with duties to Italy. Besides the immediate advantage of preserving and cherishing their activity there was (and is still more to-day) the probability that with increasing population and wealth Italy might become a first-rate naval Power. With this point in view Italian seamanship could not be allowed to atrophy in the interest of temporary economy. In almost all matters of civil administration-posts, railways, justice, the civil service— it was inevitable that, from the first, the task of the monarchy should be terribly uphill.

We have in our time come to lavish admiration on mediocrity; we use the most extravagant language about very small performances. In fact we have almost lost the sense of proportion, or retain only enough of that sense to recognise and decry grandeur.

Consequently when one talks about the field of Cannae and 'resolute profundity' one mistrusts one's own language instinctively. Only after contemplating the work attentively are we reassured. Here we have a people nominally one, really a loosely knit half-dozen States with thirty millions of inhabitants. Of these thirty millions perhaps one-fifth have had a short experience of constitutional govern

ment: the rest have been accustomed for many centuries to despotic government by aliens. In England we have experienced periodical anxiety at the risks which we were running in 1832, 1867, and 1885. What were those risks to the experiment of Constitutional Italy? Absolutely nothing. In Italy everything had to be created; the machinery was the easiest to forge; but what was the machinery without the men and the spirit? Resolute profundity' seems a pedantic and inadequate expression in the face of the solution of this problem. We have distinguished between the heroic period. and the period after 1870, but in fact, for the Monarchy, it was all heroic. Superhuman resolution and foresight' alone seem fitting terms for the sagacity of the House of Savoy in facing what for many years must have looked like defeat, and in winning through innumerable defeats to victory. One wonders that the country moved at all; without the Monarchy to guide and steady it, it certainly would not have moved. The marvel was not that things should occasionally have gone wrong, but that they should ever have gone right.

Inflexible courage, the example of devotion to duty in the highest places, mutual confidence between King and people, a patience, truly Italian, which said in effect at every blunder, 'The next generation will do better '—these are the noble qualities which justify and inspire the phrase so often blasphemed, so often made ridiculous by the incompetent, 'L' Italia farà da se.'

We note one distressing circumstance after 1870-that Italy, who owed so much to France, has become estranged, and soon afterwards enters into intimate alliance with the direst foes of France.

Between 1866 and 1870 there was an incident. It was only a telegram of six words, but while it was potent enough to strengthen the growing sense of Italian nationality it did so, alas! at the expense of making every patriotic Italian feel that he had a personal quarrel with France. The telegram ran, Les chassepots ont fait des merveilles.' The Englishman and the Italian have much in common; they understand each other instinctively. They are supposed to differ, in that the Englishman is credited with a short memory. In fact he has as good a memory as anybody else; but he does not think it dignified or profitable to cherish an ancient grudge when an immediate advantage can be secured by forgetting it. The Italian is the same forty years are long enough to have remembered an affront: the telegram is now pigeonholed and the relations of France and Italy are excellent. It is impossible to imagine Italy marching 300,000 men into France under inspiration from abroad.

On the north-eastern frontier Italy is in alliance with her neighbour. What will become of that alliance is a subject for much facile speculation, but it seems unlikely to develope into hostility.

Practically secure from complications abroad, Italy has ample leisure in which to work out her destiny at home. The theory of

Italian public life is, and has been, that it is better for an Italian to do a given piece of work and to do it as badly as possible than for a foreigner to do it and to do it as well as possible. This is not pigheadedness or conceit, but profound wisdom. Blunders teach. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. To appreciate the wisdom of this policy we have but to visit Rome. Enthusiasm about Rome is natural to Englishmen. It is, as a rule, either ecclesiastical or antiquarian by origin. It has been my good fortune to listen to many visitors to Rome just returned from their travels. They all reason in the same way, men or women. Either they say, ' Henry the Eighth had six wives; therefore Anglican orders are invalid; therefore Rome ought to be restored to the Papacy,' or else, if absorbed in the study of antiquity, they denounce 'modern Rome' as 'shoddy,' overbuilt,' and 'uninteresting,' averring that Italians have 'no sense of art' and are afflicted with 'megalomania.'

Mediocrity contemplating magnificence. So imposing is modern Rome that it is hard to begin the task of doing justice to the Royal City. It is not large, as we estimate size, but it is none the worse for that. Some flesh is good on a man's bones, but we do not adore Silenus. Rome is the more stately for not being bloated. It does not really matter where we begin, so let us take a map of Rome to the Pincian and study it there.

Straight through the Trastevere there has been driven a boulevard traversing four squares, viz. Piazza della Libertà, Piazza Cola di Rienzo, Piazza dell' Unità, and finally at the very gates of the Vatican Piazza del Risorgimento. It would be impossible to proclaim more loudly the fact that Rome is irrevocably Royal Rome, even if the fact were daily proclaimed

ance.

From the way in which many English people talk it would be supposed that the House of Savoy was in Rome more or less on sufferThis does not look like it. As for ' no sense of Art' we English live in so frail a structure ourselves that we should do well to avoid throwing stones. Modern Rome breathes art. We mark the Ponte Garibaldi. By-and-by we shall descend from the Pincian and look at the two pillars standing by the bridge. They bear these simple words, which (for those who can understand them) convey an epic of emotion:

S.P.Q.R.
MENTANA 1867

DIGIONE 1870.

To explain, to amplify, to comment is to reduce oneself to banality; let no one say that he understands Rome or Italy who can contem

plate unmoved this poem in marble. And the people who erected this monument have no sense of Art!

In this pellmell of joyous impressions it matters little what we take next. Let us take the trams. We may not all be well read in Italian history, or possess a sense of art, but anybody can understand a tram. The Roman tramways are the best in the world. In other cities there may be more spent on upholstery, and the trams may run faster, but no city can be better served. And yet, they say, Italians are not practical. They are at least practical enough to have turned the Rome of Monte Cristo into a glorious city, well paved, well drained, well policed, convenient, and stately.

We return to the Trastevere to look at the new Courts of Justice facing the Tiber by the Castle of S. Angelo. These are very magnificent. We recall in silent misery our own Courts of Justice, where everything is wrong, from the site to the internal lighting, including such details as style and construction. The sites on the Tiber are nothing like so fine as the sites on the Thames, but the Italians make the best of theirs and we make the worst of ours. There can hardly be a building in Europe so harmonious as this. The mass, the balance, the outline, the decoration are all as noble as possible, and the whole is imposing to the last degree.

Probably the memorial to King Victor Emmanuel will be still more imposing when it is finished. Its position in front of the Campidoglio gives a vista the whole length of the Corso Umberto Primo from the Piazza del Popolo.

It is no part of the scope of these few pages to write guide-book jottings on Rome, but only to point out that Royal Rome lives and moves in its magnificent life, the only surviving Rome. Moreover, we have to remember that only forty years separate us from the Rome of Lothair. In so short a time have so great things been done. One often hears, among other disparaging remarks, the statement that modern Italians are 'Vandals '-in evidence of which we hear that they are pulling down so much of ancient Rome.

It depends to some extent on what we agree to call ancient; but, in effect, dirt is not always picturesque; all things old are not good; modern Italians cherish whatever is genuinely classic. When streets have to be condemned for any reason they are dealt with promptly. Thus in Naples the streets where the cholera broke out twenty-four years ago have been swept away; a broad boulevard has been driven through the space. We may be fairly sure that wherever we see a change the change was necessary; moreover, the talent shown in taking advantage of natural sites, and in making the most of space and vista, is quite remarkable. We must perforce dwell long on Rome, because Rome is a summary of modern Italy; and of the three RomesRoyal Rome, Ecclesiastical Rome, and Pagan Rome-Royal Rome is the greatest; in fact, it is Rome, having easily absorbed the other two.

VOL. LXIV-No. 377

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