ly, ravaged by the Longobardo, plundered by the French, scourged
by the Popes, tortured by the Kaisers; of Italy, with her cities at war
with each other, her dukedoms against her free towns, her tyrants in
conflict with her municipalities; of Italy, in a word, as she has been
from the days of Theodoric and Theodolinda to the days of Napoleon and
Francis Joseph. It is this Italy--our Italy--which through all the
centuries of bloodshed and of suffering never ceased to bear aloft and
unharmed its divining-rod of inspiration as S. Christopher bore the
young Christ above the swell of the torrent and the rage of the tempest.

All over Italy from north to south men arose in the darkness of those
ages who became the guides and the torchbearers of a humanity that had
gone astray in the carnage and gloom.

The faith of Columbus of Genoa gave to mankind a new world. The insight
of Galileo of Pisa revealed to it the truth of its laws of being. Guido
Monacco of Arezzo bestowed on it the most spiritual of all earthly joys
by finding a visible record for the fugitive creations of harmony ere
then impalpable and evanescent as the passing glories of the clouds.
Dante Alighieri taught to it the might of that vulgar tongue in which
the child babbles at its mother's knee, and the orator leads a
breathless multitude at his will to death or triumph. Teofilo of Empoli
discovered for it the mysteries of colour that lie in the mere earths of
the rocks and the shores, and the mere oils of the roots and the
poppies. Arnoldo of Breccia lit for it the first flame of free opinion,
and Amatus of Breccia perfected for it the most delicate and exquisite
of all instruments of sound, which men of Cremona, or of Bologna, had
first created. Maestro Giorgio, and scores of earnest workers whose
names are lost in Pesaro and in Gubbio, bestowed on it those homelier
treasures of the graver's and the potter's labours which have carried
the alphabet of art into the lowliest home. Brunelleschi of Florence
left it in legacy the secret of lifting a mound of marble to the upper
air as easily as a child can blow a bubble; and Giordano Bruno of Nola
found for it those elements of philosophic thought, which have been
perfected into the clear and prismatic crystals of the metaphysics of
the Teuton and the Scot.

From south and north, from east and west, they rose, the ministers and
teachers of mankind.

From mountain and from valley, from fortress smoking under battle