is indeed illustrious, it
remains inseparably connected with the not less illustrious name of the
great Cavour, and these two names are again associated with the name of
Victor Emmanuel. These three together form for Italians a tricolour as
brilliant, as ever fresh, and I hope as enduring for many and many
generations, as the national flag that now waves over united Italy."

III

The tide of vast events in this momentous period now rolled heavily away
from the Danube and the Bosphorus, from Tiber and Po and Adriatic sea, to
the shores of the Baltic and the mouths of the Elbe. None of the
fascination of old-world history lends its magic to the new chapter that
opened in 1863. Cavour had gone. Bismarck with sterner genius, fiercer
purpose, more implacable designs, and with a hand as of hammered iron,
strode into the field. The Italian statesman was the author of a singular
prediction. In 1861 when Cavour was deprecating angry protests from the
European powers against his invasion of the Marches, he used words of
extraordinary foresight to the representative of Prussia. "I am sorry," he
said, "that the cabinet of Berlin judges so severely the conduct of the
King of Italy and his government. I console myself by thinking that on
this occasion I am setting an example that probably in no long time,
Prussia will be very glad to imitate."(86) So the world speedily found
out.

(M33) The torch of nationality reached material for a flame long
smouldering in two duchies of the remote north, that had been incorporated
in Denmark by solemn European engagements in 1852, but were inhabited by a
population, one of them wholly and the other mainly, not Scandinavian but
German. Thus the same question of race, history, language, sentiment, that
had worked in Italy, Poland, the Balkan states, rose up in this miniature
case. The circumstances that brought that case into such fatal prominence
do not concern us here. The alleged wrongs of her brethren in
Schleswig-Holstein unchained such a tempest of excitement in central
Germany, that the German courts could hardly have resisted if they would.
Just as powerless was the Danish government in face of the Scandinavian
sentiment of its subjects and their neighbours of the race. Even the
liberals, then a power in Germany and Bismarck's bitter foes, were
vehemently on the national side against the Danish claim; and one of the
most striking of all Bismarck's feats was the skill with which he n