i and given it to the French king. Dante was for
German Emperors against Italian Popes. Modern Italy has driven out
Bourbons and Austrians and given the crown of her Unity to a house of
Kings, brave and honourable, but in whose veins there is no drop of
Italian blood, any more than their old Dukedom of Savoy was ever Italian
in any sense. The glory of history is rarely the glory of any ideal; it
is more often the glory of success.

The Roman Republic was the result of internal opposition, and the
instinct to oppose power, often rightly, sometimes wrongly, will be the
last to survive in the Latin race. In the Middle Age, when Rome had
shrunk from the boundaries of civilization to the narrow limits of the
Aurelian walls, it produced the hatred between the Barons and the
people, and within the people themselves, the less harmful rivalry of
the Regions and their Captains.

[Illustration: SANTA FRANCESCA ROMANA]

These Captains held office for three months only. At the expiration of
the term, they and the people of their Region proceeded in procession,
all bearing olive branches, to the temple of Venus and Rome, of which a
part was early converted into the Church of Santa Maria Nuova, now known
as Santa Francesca Romana, between the Forum and the Colosseum, and just
within the limits of 'Monti.' Down from the hills on the one side the
crowd came; up from the regions of the Tiber, round the Capitol from
Colonna, and Trevi, and Campo Marzo, as ages before them the people had
thronged to the Comitium, only a few hundred yards away. There, before
the church in the ruins, each Region dropped the names of its own two
candidates into the ballot box, and chance decided which of the two
should be Captain next. In procession, then, all round the Capitol, they
went to Aracoeli, and the single Senator, the lone shadow of the
Conscript Fathers, ratified each choice. Lastly, among themselves, they
used to choose the Prior, or Chief Captain, until it became the custom
that the captain of the First Region, Monti, should of right be head of
all the rest, and in reality one of the principal powers in the city.

And the principal church of Monti also held preeminence over others. The
Basilica of Saint John Lateran was entitled 'Mother and Head of all
Churches of the City and of the World'; and it took its distinctive name
from a rich Roman family, whose splendid house stood on the same spot as
far back as the early days of the Empire. Even