rt. What other nations practiced were constant attempts to foment
jealousies among her different States, and create a demand for foreign
interference and the presence of foreign troops. At present a dream of
the ancient republic is the animating cause (or rather perhaps a sense
of the capabilities of Italy for the new republicanism of the time)
with leaders; who appeal to the recollections of the past because a
sense of the present is not to be depended on in the many; and the
shout for the old federative republics of past centuries awakens the
pride of those whose patriotism might not be strong enough to lead
them to the sacrifices which the object demands.

There seems to be necessary to the Italian mind a hope of regaining
something that has been _lost_, and if this is rightly used there can
be no doubt that the people will attain to something they _need_. The
republics of elder Italy are no more the proper object for Italian
enterprise, than would be the old colonial dependencies for the
efforts of Americans. But Italy must be aroused; she must be called up
to some general object; her great men must be stimulated to useful
efforts, and her humbler citizens must be enticed away from
insurrectionary movements to revolutionary action, and that cry which
the soonest rouses and unites them is the true watchword of
independence. Some proper hand, some well endowed mind must lead them
in the right path--must set their faces and direct their efforts
toward the proper object. The alarm cry may be the same, though the
object of rising be opposite to that announced. The same bells and the
same peels would call up the citizens of Florence to withstand or
divert an inundation of the Arno which would be used to arouse them to
check the destructive progress of a conflagration.

Italy, however, must not be kept too long in chase of the past
republics. She needs the confederation of modern democracy, and, when
once aroused, must be early directed to the true object. The Italian
who spends his power, his wealth and his influence in attempts to
restore the ancient confederacy is like the man who starts westward at
evening to overtake the departed sun. But the Italian who, roused to a
proper sense of the capability of his country, determines to secure to
her the best good that other nations now enjoy, is like the man who,
starting at dawn, proceeds in an easterly course to meet the sun in
his rising. There is a necessity laid upon bot