a sense, his
work, as the consolidation of the United States after the death of
Lincoln was still moulded by his vanished hand.

If it be true that the world's history is the world's judgment, it
is no less true that the history of the state is the judgment of
the statesman. Cavour would not have asked to be tried by any other
criterion. He achieved a great result. He doubted if ideals of
perfection could he reached, or whether, if reached, they would not be
found, like mountain tops, to afford no abiding place for the foot
of man. Perhaps he forgot too much that from the ice and snow of
the mountain comes the river which fertilises the land. But, if he
deprecated the pursuit of what he deemed the impossible, he condemned
as criminal the neglect of the attainable. The charge of cynicism was
unjust; Cavour was at heart an optimist; he never doubted that life
was immensely worth living, that the fields open to human energy were
splendid and beneficent. He hated shams, and he hated all forms of
caste-feeling. He was one of the few continental statesmen who never
exaggerated the power for good of government; he looked upon the
private citizen who plods at his business, gives his children a good
education, and has a reserve of savings in the funds, as the mainstay
of the state.

No life of Cavour has been written since the publication of his
correspondence, and of a mass of documents which throw light on his
career. It has seemed more useful, therefore, within the prescribed
limits, to endeavour to show what he did, and how he did it, than
to give much space to the larger considerations which the Italian
movement suggests. Of the ultimate issue of the events with which he
was concerned it is too soon to speak. These events stand in close
relation to the struggle between the civil and ecclesiastical powers,
which dates back to the first assumption of political prerogatives by
the Bishops of Rome. Cavour did not suffer his sovereign to eat humble
pie like King John, or to go to Canossa like Henry IV., but neither
did he ever entertain the wish to turn persecutor as Pombal was,
perhaps, forced to do, or to browbeat the head of the Church as the
first Napoleon took a pleasure in doing. He aimed at keeping the two
powers separate, but each supreme in its own province.

Content you with monopolising heaven,
And let this little hanging ball alone;
For, give ye but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, t