his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as
a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was
received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am
I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.'

Against the classical, not to say pagan, leanings of these two poets,
a reaction set in with Alessandro Manzoni, the founder of Italian
Romanticism, to which he gave an aspect differing from that which the
same movement wore in France, because he was an ardent Catholic at a
time when Christianity had almost the charm of novelty. His religious
outpourings combine the fervour of the Middle Ages with modern
expansion, and he freed the Italian language from pedantic
restrictions without impairing its dignity. It was once the fashion to
inveigh against Manzoni for, as it was said, inculcating resignation;
but he did nothing of the kind. As a young man he had sung of the
Italians as 'Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,' and though he was not of
those who fight either with the sword or the pen, yet that 'Riscatto'
was the dream of his youth and manhood, and the joy of his old age.
His gentleness was never contaminated by servility, and the love for
his country, profound if placid, which appears in every line of his
writings, appealed to a class that could not be reached by fiery
turbulence of thought.

In an age when newspapers have taken the place of books, it may seem
strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and
romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to
speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were
still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight
allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing
listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of
importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in
itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people
does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the
intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than
you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not
literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to
bring Italy back to life. The land was refreshed by a flood of purely
national song, full of the laughter and the tears of Italian
character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music,
the only art unc