settled policy acting through
many generations, but not the work of any conscious theory about races
and languages. It is a special mark of our time, a special mark of the
influence which doctrines about race and language have had on men's
minds, that we have seen great nations united by processes in which
theories of race and language really have had much to do with bringing
about their union. If statesmen have not been themselves moved by such
theories, they have at least found that it suited their purpose to make
use of such theories as a means of working on the minds of others. In
the reunion of the severed German and Italian nations, the conscious
feeling of nationality, and the acceptance of a common language as the
outward badge of nationality, had no small share. Poets sang of language
as the badge of national union; statesmen made it the badge, so far as
political considerations did not lead them to do anything else. The
revived kingdom of Italy is very far from taking in all the speakers of
the Italian tongue. Lugano, Trent, Aquileia--to take places which are
clearly Italian, and not to bring in places of more doubtful
nationality, like the cities of Istria and Dalmatia--form no part of the
Italian political body, and Corsica is not under the same rule as the
other two great neighboring islands. But the fact that all these places
do not belong to the Italian body at once suggests the twofold question,
why they do not belong to it, and whether they ought not to belong to
it. History easily answers the first question; it may perhaps also
answer the second question in a way which will say Yes as regards one
place and No as regards another. Ticino must not lose her higher
freedom; Trieste must remain the needful mouth for southern Germany;
Dalmatia must not be cut off from the Slavonic mainland; Corsica would
seem to have sacrificed national feeling to personal hero-worship. But
it is certainly hard to see why Trent and Aquileia should be kept apart
from the Italian body. On the other hand, the revived Italian kingdom
contains very little which is not Italian in speech. It is perhaps by a
somewhat elastic view of language that the dialect of Piedmont and the
dialect of Sicily are classed under one head; still, as a matter of
fact, they have a single classical standard, and they are universally
accepted as varieties of the same tongue. But it is only in a few Alpine
valleys that languages are spoken which, whether R