always
most violent: where both parties are cooped up within a narrow space,
political difference necessarily produces personal malignity. Every man
must be a soldier; every moment may produce a war. No citizen can lie
down secure that he shall not be roused by the alarum-bell, to repel
or avenge an injury. In such petty quarrels Greece squandered the blood
which might have purchased for her the permanent empire of the world,
and Italy wasted the energy and the abilities which would have enabled
her to defend her independence against the Pontiffs and the Caesars.

All this is true: yet there is still a compensation. Mankind has not
derived so much benefit from the empire of Rome as from the city of
Athens, nor from the kingdom of France as from the city of Florence.
The violence of party feeling may be an evil; but it calls forth that
activity of mind which in some states of society it is desirable to
produce at any expense. Universal soldiership may be an evil; but where
every man is a soldier there will be no standing army. And is it no evil
that one man in every fifty should be bred to the trade of slaughter;
should live only by destroying and by exposing himself to be destroyed;
should fight without enthusiasm and conquer without glory; be sent to a
hospital when wounded, and rot on a dunghill when old? Such, over more
than two-thirds of Europe, is the fate of soldiers. It was something
that the citizen of Milan or Florence fought, not merely in the vague
and rhetorical sense in which the words are often used, but in sober
truth, for his parents, his children, his lands, his house, his altars.
It was something that he marched forth to battle beneath the Carroccio,
which had been the object of his childish veneration: that his aged
father looked down from the battlements on his exploits; that his
friends and his rivals were the witnesses of his glory. If he fell, he
was consigned to no venal or heedless guardians. The same day saw him
conveyed within the walls which he had defended. His wounds were dressed
by his mother; his confession was whispered to the friendly priest
who had heard and absolved the follies of his youth; his last sigh was
breathed upon the lips of the lady of his love. Surely there is no sword
like that which is beaten out of a ploughshare. Surely this state of
things was not unmixedly bad; its evils were alleviated by enthusiasm
and by tenderness; and it will at least be acknowledged that it was