tin; the Roman column points to the Venetian Campanile; all the
proudest memories are gathered round the Lion of St Mark, which in
every town, almost in every village, recalls the splendid though not
blameless suzerainty of the Serene Republic. The sky, the
olive-groves, the wild pomegranates make us think of Salerno; by the
spoken tongue we are often reminded of Tuscany, for few Italian
dialects are so pure. The political subjection of the country to Italy
dates from Augustus; its political subjection to Austria dates from
Napoleon. Dalmatia, with the glorious little commonwealth of Ragusa,
and the free city of Cattaro, was bartered away with Venice at Campo
Formio; and as with Venice, so with Dalmatia, the Holy Alliance
violated its own principle of restoring the proe-Napoleonic state of
things and confirmed the sale.

At the beginning of the war, Austria did not ignore that her loss of
territory might exceed Venetia. The Archduke Albrecht, in his
proclamation to his soldiers, appealed to them to protect their
mothers, wives and sisters from being ruled by a foreign race.

Even a successful raid upon Dalmatia or Istria need not have given
those districts to Italy, but it would have brought such an event
within the range of a moderately strong political telescope. The Slavs
(erected since into a party hostile to their Italian fellow-citizens
by a fostering of Panslavism which may not, in the long run, prove
sound policy for Austria) were then ready to make friends with anyone
opposed to their actual rulers. They would not have been easy to
govern after an Italian invasion; still less easy to govern would the
Latin element have been, which was and is _Italianissimo_. Since
Prussia became the German Empire, she has set her face against Italian
extension eastward, but in 1866, had her advice been intelligently
acted upon, it might have generated facts the logic of which none
would have had the power to stay.

Moltke's plan more than hinted at a march on Vienna by the Semmering,
and this is what is supposed to have induced La Marmora to treat it with
scorn. With the bogey of Prussia vanquished before his eyes, he
doubtless asked what the Italians would do at Vienna if they got there?
He put the plan in his pocket, and showed it neither to his staff nor to
the King, who would certainly have been attracted by it, as he had set
his heart on the volunteers, at least, crossing the Adriatic. With
regard to the campaign at hom