to modern history
its form and colour; and those ideas elaborated, the impress of which
may still be traced upon the opinions, the institutions, and the creeds
of Europe. In Italy, too, empire has left her ineffaceable traces, and
art her glorious footsteps. There is, all will admit, a peculiar and
exquisite pleasure in visiting such spots: nor is there pleasure only,
but profit also. One's taste may be corrected, and his judgment
strengthened, by seeing the masterpieces of ancient genius. New trains
of thought may be suggested, and new sources of information opened, by
the sight of men and of manners wholly new. But more than this,--I
believed that there were lessons to be learned there, which it was
emphatically worth one's while going there to learn, touching the
working of that politico-religious system of which Italy has so long
been the seat and centre. I had previously been at some little pains to
make myself acquainted with this system in its principles, and wished to
have an opportunity of studying it in its effects upon the government of
the country, and the condition of the people, as respects their trade,
industry, knowledge, liberty, religion, and general happiness. All I
shall say in the following pages will have a bearing, more or less
direct, upon this main point.

It is impossible to disjoin the present of these countries from the
past; nor can the solemn and painful enigma which they exhibit be
unriddled but by a reference to the past, and that not the immediate,
but the remote past. There is truth, no doubt, in the saying of the old
moralist, that nations lose in moments what they had acquired in years;
but the remark is applicable rather to the accelerated speed with which
the last stages of a nation's ruin are accomplished, than to the slow
and imperceptible progress which usually marks its commencement. Unless
when cut off by the sudden stroke of war, it requires five centuries at
least to consummate the fall of a great people. One must pass,
therefore, over those hideous abuses which are the immediate harbingers
of national disaster, and which exclusively engross the attention of
ordinary inquirers, and go back to those remote ages, and those minute
and apparently insignificant causes, amid which national declension,
unsuspected often by the nation itself, takes its rise. The destiny of
modern Europe was sealed so long ago as A.D. 606, when the Bishop of
Rome was made head of the universal Church