ingdom of the Two
Sicilies.

No less than twenty-two million of Italians were now united under the
sceptre of Victor Emmanuel, who, in accordance with the advice of his
Prime Minister, Count Cavour, dissolved the Parliament. The new election
took place at the end of January, 1861. The constitution as established
in Sardinia was put in force from Turin to Palermo. At the same time the
King nominated, as suggested by his responsible advisers, sixty new
Senators or Members of the Upper House. They were selected chiefly among
the most prominent and influential men of the Provinces of Central and
Southern Italy. The elections were everywhere favorable to the new order
of things; namely, the formation of the single Kingdom of Italy under
the constitutional rule of Victor Emmanuel. The majority of the new
Chamber gave a hearty support to Count Cavour.

On February 18, 1861, the first Italian Parliament, representing all the
Provinces of Italy--Venetia and the Roman patrimony alone
excepted--assembled in the Palazzo Carignano at Turin. The title assumed
by the King in concert with his ministers and Parliament was "Victor
Emmanuel II, by the grace of God and the will of the nation, King of
Italy." [Footnote: It was almost ten years later--when Victor Emmanuel
entered Rome, September 20, 1870--that the emancipation and union of
Italy were made complete.--ED.]

(1861) EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS, Andrew D. White and Nikolai
Turgenieff

By the act that freed the serfs in Russia, Alexander II, to whom it was
in great measure due, obtained a place of unusual honor among the
sovereigns that have ruled his nation. It was the grand achievement of
Alexander's reign, and caused him to be hailed as one of the world's
liberators. The importance of this event in Russian history is not
diminished by the fact that its practical benefits have not as yet been
realized to the full extent anticipated. In 1888 Stepniak, the Russian
author and reformer, declared that emancipation had utterly failed to
realize the ardent expectations of its advocates and promoters, had
failed to improve the material condition of the former serfs, who on the
whole were worse off than before emancipation. The same assertion has
been made with respect to the emancipation of slaves in the United
States, but in neither case does the objection invalidate the historical
significance of an act that formally liberated millions of human beings
from heredi