en followed their fathers' trades from generation to
generation, and lived in their fathers' houses from one century to
another; and there was all the individuality and the local tradition
which never really hindered civilization, but were always an
insurmountable barrier against progress.

Some one has called democracy Rome's 'Original Sin.' It would be more
just and true to say that most of Rome's misfortunes, and Italy's too,
have been the result of the instinct to oppose all that is, whether good
or bad, as soon as it has existed for a while; in short, the original
sin of Italians is an original detestation of that unity of which the
empty name has been a fetish for ages. Rome, thrown back upon herself
in the dark times, when she was shorn of her possessions, was a true
picture of what Italy was before Rome's iron hand had bound the Italian
peoples together by force, of what she became again as soon as that
force was relaxed, of what she has grown to be once more, now that the
delight of revolution has disappeared in the dismal swamp of financial
disappointment, of what she will be to all time, because, from all time,
she has been populated by races of different descent, who hated each
other as only neighbours can.

The redeeming feature of a factional life has sometimes been found in a
readiness to unite against foreign oppression; it has often shown itself
in an equal willingness to submit to one foreign ruler in order to get
rid of another. Circumstances have made the result good or bad. In the
year 799, the Romans attacked and wounded Pope Leo the Third in a solemn
procession, almost killed him and drove him to flight, because he had
sent the keys of the city to Charles the Great, in self-protection
against the splendid, beautiful, gifted, black-hearted Irene, Empress of
the East, who had put out her own son's eyes and taken the throne by
force. Two years later the people of Rome shouted "Life and Victory to
Charles the Emperor," when the same Pope Leo, his scars still fresh,
crowned Charlemagne in Saint Peter's. One remembers, for that matter,
that Napoleon Bonaparte, crowned in French Paris by another Pope, girt
on the very sword of that same Frankish Charles, whose bones the French
had scattered to the elements at Aix. Savonarola, of more than doubtful
patriotism, to whom Saint Philip Neri prayed, but whom the English
historian, Roscoe, flatly calls a traitor, would have taken Florence
from the Italian Medic