provinces. As for
the Roman States, Austria reckoned on her influence in always
securing the election of a Pope who would give her no trouble. Seeing
herself without rivals and all-powerful, she deemed her position
unassailable. She forgot that, by giving Italy an unity of misery, she
was preparing the way for another unity. Common hatred engendered
common love; common sufferings led on to a common effort. If some
prejudices passed away under the Napoleonic rule, many more still
remained, and possibly, to eradicate so old an evil, no cure less
drastic than universal servitude would have sufficed. Italians felt
for the first time what before only the greatest among them had
felt--that they were brothers in one household, children of one mother
whom they were bound to redeem. Jealousies and millennial feuds died
out; the intense municipal spirit which, imperfect as it was, had yet
in it precious political germs, widened into patriotism. Italy was
re-born.

Black, however, was the present outlook. Total commercial stagnation
and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which
spread through the land. The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the
festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of Napoleon, said
in private to an Englishman who asked him why he did not give his
voice to the liberties of his country which he desired, though he did
not expect to see them: 'It would be _vox clamantis in deserto_;
besides, how can the grievances of Italy be made known? No one dares
to write--scarcely to think--politics; if truth is to be told, it must
be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the
complaints of Europe.' A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had
but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be
nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only
weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual
recriminations of slaves.' That as patriotic a heart as ever beat
should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair
tells of the quagmire--not only political but spiritual--into which
Italy was sunk. The first thing needful was to restore the people to
consciousness, to animation of some sort, it did not matter what, so
it were a sign of life. Foscolo himself, who impressed on what he
wrote his own proud and scornful temperament, almost savage in its
independence, fired his countrymen to better things than the
despa