Popolo_ gives free instruction, yearly, to eighteen hundred pupils, in
every branch of technical and art education. This fact alone offers its
own explanation of that general intelligence of the people which so
impresses the visitor in Florence. But this is a municipal rather than
national fact. Every special development in any direction in Italy will
always be found to be the characteristic of the city or locality, not of
the country as a whole; and thus the unity of Italy is still a political
expression rather than a political fact. It is a theory which is not yet
developed into an experience. Italy is in the making. Practically, she
is the youngest of countries, with less than forty years of experimental
attempt at _national_ life behind her. Not until 1919 will she have
attained the first half century of her united life. Educational
facilities, inclusive of schools, libraries, and museums; railroads,
telegraph and telephone service, electric lighting and electric
trams,--all the ways and means of the modern mechanism of life are,
inevitably, in a nebulous state in Italy. The political situation is
extremely interesting at the present time. That the "Blacks" and the
"Whites" are diametrically opposed to each other is in the nature of
history rather than that of contemporary record or of prophecy; and that
this is a traditional attitude in this city of the Caesars is not a fact
by any means unknown; but the situation is complicated by the third
party--the Socialists--who, by allying themselves with either, would
easily turn the scales and command the situation. If they were ardent
Catholics and were advocates of the Papal supremacy, the temporal power
of the Pope would be restored in less time almost than could be
recorded, and Pius X would be in residence in the Palazzo Quirinale
rather than Victor Emanuele III. But this great modern uprising in
Italy--a movement that is gathering force and numbers so rapidly that no
one can venture to prophesy results even in the comparatively immediate
future--this great modern movement is neither for church nor state. The
Socialist uprising is very strong in Milan and through Northern Italy.
It is much in evidence in the Umbrian region--in Foligno, Spoleto,
Nervi, and those towns; and from Frascati to Genzano and in the Lake
Nemi chain of villages--Rocca di Papa, Castel Gandolpho, Ariccia,
Albano--these villages within some fifteen miles of Rome. In these there
is a veritable stro