dictate revolt against the law? If not, why should they do so
in Piedmont?

The successor of Santa Rosa in the ministry was Count Cavour, who
thus in 1850 for the first time became an official servant of the
state. When D'Azeglio submitted the appointment to the King, Victor
Emmanuel remarked that, though he did not object to it in the least,
they had better take care, as this man would turn them all out before
long. This man was, in fact, to stand at the helm of Piedmont, with
short intervals, till he died, and was to carve out from the block of
formless marble, not the Italy of sublime dreams, which, owing her
deliverance to her sons alone, should arise immaculate from the grave
a Messiah among the nations, but the actual Italy which has been
accomplished; imperfect and peccable as human things mostly are,
belonging rather to prose than to poetry, to matter than to spirit,
but, for all that, an Italy which is one and is free.

Fifty years ago a great English writer pointed out what the real Italy
would be, if it were to be; 'The prosperity of nations as of
individuals,' wrote Mr Ruskin in one of his earliest papers, 'is cold
and hard-hearted and forgetful. The dead lie, indeed, trampled down by
the living; the place thereof shall know them no more, for that place is
not in the hearts of the survivors, for whose interest they have made
way. But adversity and ruin point to the sepulchre, and it is not
trodden on; to the chronicle, and it does not decay. Who would
substitute the rush of a new nation, the struggle of an awakening power,
for the dreamy sleep of Italy's desolation, for the sweet silence of
melancholy thought, her twilight time of everlasting memories?'

[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR]

There is the case, stated with beautiful lucidity, of the somewhat
ghoulish dilettantism which, enjoying tombs, would condemn all
mankind to breathe their atmosphere. It is not, however, in order to
discuss that view that the passage is quoted, but because of its
relevancy to what Cavour attempted and what he did. Never was there a
mind which cherished fewer illusions. He believed that the pursuit of
the unattainable was still more a political crime than a political
blunder. He was, in this, what is now called an opportunist, and he
was also an opportunist in believing that though in politics you can
choose your aim, you can very rarely choose your means. He held (and
this was the reason that he was so profoundly hated by me