almost
incredible to those who knew her in her former state, has proved
costly without example. During the whole period it has been necessary
to spend in ever-increasing ratio on the army and navy, and this
expenditure, though emphatically not the chief, has yet been a
concomitant cause of financial trouble. The point cannot be inquired
into here of how far greater wisdom and higher character in Italian
public servants might have limited the evil and reconciled progress
with economy; but it may be said that if the path entered upon by the
man who took charge of the exchequer after Menabrea's fall, Quintino
Sella, had been rigorously followed by his successors, the present
situation would not be what it is.

Giovanni Lanza assumed the premiership in the government in which
Sella was Minister of Finance. Both these politicians were
Piedmontese, and both were known as men of conspicuous integrity, but
Lanza's rigid conservatism made it seem unlikely that the Roman
question would take a fresh turn under his administration. In
politics, however, the unlikely is what generally happens; events are
stronger than men.

On the 8th of December the twenty-first Ecumenical Council assembled
in Rome. From the day of its meeting, in spite of the strenuous
opposition of its most learned and illustrious members, there was no
more doubt that the dogma under consideration would be voted by the
partly astute and partly complaisant majority than that it would have
been rejected in the twenty preceding Councils. On the 18th of July
1870, the Pope was proclaimed Infallible.

That was a moment of excitement such as has not often thrilled Europe,
but the cause was not the Infallibility of Pius IX. On the 16th,
Napoleon declared war with Prussia. War, like death, comes as a shock,
however plainly it has been foreseen; besides, it was only the
well-informed who knew how near the match had been to the
powder-magazine for two years and more. Whether the explosion, at the
last, was timed by Napoleon or by Bismarck is not of great importance;
it could have been but little delayed. Napoleon was beset alike by the
revolutionary spectre and by the gaunt King of Terrors; he knew the
throw was desperate, but with the gambler's instinct, which had always
been so strong in him, he was magnetised by it because it was
desperate. Pitiful egotist though he was, history may forgive him
sooner than it forgives the selfish Chauvinism of Thiers, who had been
g