dy of
fossil remains were Leonardo da Vinci and Fracasta. The great chemical
discoveries of this century were made by instruments which bear the
names of Galvani and Volta. Why need I speak of science alone? Who will
dispute with that illustrious people the palm of music and painting, of
statuary and architecture? The dark cloud which for a thousand years has
hung over that beautiful peninsula is fringed with irradiations of
light. There is not a department of human knowledge from which Italy has
not extracted glory, no art that she has not adorned.

[Sidenote: Causes of her depression.] Notwithstanding the adverse
circumstances in which she has been placed, Italy has thus taken no
insignificant part in the advancement of science. I may at the close of
a work of which so large a portion has been devoted to the relation of
her influences, political and religious, on the rest of Europe, be
perhaps excused the expression of a hope that the day is approaching in
which she will, with Rome as her capital, take that place in the modern
system to which she is entitled. The course of centuries has proved that
her ecclesiastical relation with foreign countries is incompatible with
her national life. It is that, and that alone, which has been the cause
of all her ills. She has asserted a jurisdiction in every other
government; the price she has paid is her own unity. The first, the
all-important step in her restitution is the reduction of the papacy to
a purely religious element. Her great bishop must no longer be an
earthly prince. Rome, in her outcry for the preservation of her temporal
possessions, forgets that Christian Europe has made a far greater
sacrifice. It has yielded Bethlehem, Gethsemane, Calvary, the Sepulchre,
the Mount of the Ascension. That is a sacrifice to which the surrender
of the fictitious donations of barbarian kings is not to be compared.

* * * * *

The foregoing paragraphs were written in 1859. Since that time Italy
has become a nation, Rome is its capital, Venice belongs to it. In
1870-71 I was an eye-witness of the presence of Italian troops in the
Eternal City.

CHAPTER XII.

CONCLUSION.--THE FUTURE OF EUROPE.

_Summary of the Argument presented in this Book respecting the mental
Progress of Europe._

_Intellectual Development is the Object of Individual Life.--It is also
the Result of social Progress._

_Nations arriving at Maturity instinctively attempt