deration over which it was hoped that the pope might preside,
and of which Venetia, still remaining Austrian, should be a member. The
scheme was intrinsically futile, but it served its turn. The Emperor of
the French was driven to peace by mixed motives. The carnage of Solferino
appalled or unnerved him; he had revealed to his soldiers and to France
that their ruler had none of the genius of a great commander; the clerical
party at home fiercely assailed the prolongation of a war that must put
the pope in peril; the case of Poland, the case of Hungary, might almost
any day be kindled into general conflagration by the freshly lighted torch
of Nationality; above all, Germany might stride forward to the Rhine to
avenge the repulse of Austria on the Po and the Mincio.(3)

Whatever the motive, Villafranca was a rude check to Italian aspirations.
Cavour in poignant rage peremptorily quitted office, rather than share
responsibility for this abortive end of all the astute and deep-laid
combinations for ten years past, that had brought the hated Austrian from
the triumph of Novara down to the defeat of Solferino. Before many months
he once more grasped the helm. In the interval the movement went forward
as if all his political tact, his prudence, his suppleness, his patience,
and his daring, had passed into the whole population of central Italy. For
eight months after Villafranca, it seemed as if the deep and politic
temper that built up the old Roman Commonwealth, were again alive in
Bologna, Parma, Modena, Florence. When we think of the pitfalls that lay
on every side, how easily France might have been irritated or estranged,
what unseasonable questions might not unnaturally have been forced
forward, what mischief the voice and spirit of the demagogue might have
stirred up, there can surely be no more wonderful case in history of
strong and sagacious leaders, Cavour, Farini, Ricasoli, the Piedmontese
king, guiding a people through the ferments of revolt, with discipline,
energy, legality, order, self-control, to the achievement of a
constructive revolution. Without the sword of France the work could not
have been begun; but it was the people and statesmen of northern and
central Italy who in these eight months made the consummation possible.
And England, too, had no inconsiderable share; for it was she who secured
the principle of non-intervention by foreign powers in Italian affairs; it
was she who strongly favoured the annexat