m Sardinia; and then, immediately
after the bloody Battle of Solferino he suddenly changed front and
declared that the war must cease. Austria yielded Lombardy, but kept
Venice, the last of the possessions for which during more than three
hundred years she had been battling in Italy. The Kingdom of Sardinia
became the Kingdom of Northern Italy.

The next year (1860) Garibaldi, the lion-like fighter, the enthusiastic
lover of Italy, gathering round him a thousand followers, made an
unexpected attack on Sicily, which was held by the tyrant King of
Naples. With his celebrated "Thousand" he won two remarkable victories.
The Sicilians joined him; the Neapolitans were driven from the island.
Not giving them time to recover, Garibaldi followed to the mainland,
defeated them again, and was master of all Southern Italy. Meanwhile
Victor Emmanuel, marching his troops southward, seized what was left of
the States of the Church. The two conquerors met midway in Italy, and
Garibaldi, grasping his sovereign by the hand, saluted him as King at
last of a united Italy. Only Rome and Venice remained outside the pale,
Rome protected by being in actual possession of the Pope, and, since
France was still Catholic, guarded by French troops from the eager
Italians. The year 1860 had been second only to 1848 in its importance
in changing the outlines of modern Europe. [Footnote: See _The Kingdom
of Italy Established_.]

Another change, immeasurably vast and still unmeasured in its
consequences, may be dated from 1859, when Charles Darwin gave to the
world his book, the _Origin of Species_. In this he proclaimed the
doctrine of the evolution of all the more complicated forms of life from
simpler forms. The idea, at first resolutely combated on religious
grounds, has gradually received more or less acceptance into the entire
religious fabric, even as were the discoveries of Galileo. [Footnote:
See _Darwin Publishes His Origin of Species_.]

DISUNION IN AMERICA

Yet each and all of these events, important as they were, grew little in
men's minds as the year 1860 drew to its close and revealed in America
the coming of a mightier quarrel. The slavery question, once supposed to
have been settled by the Missouri Compromise, had proved itself
incapable of such settlement. The forward march of democracy had in fact
made slavery an anachronism, outgrown and impossible. Even the Emperor
of Russia saw that, and in 1861 liberated all the serfs within