such a lofty race of patriots, one
is prominent. The proud recollections of their Roman fathers often
troubled the dreams of the sons. The petty rival republics, and the
petty despotic principalities, which had started up from some great
families, who at first came forward as the protectors of the people from
their exterior enemies or their interior factions, at length settled
into a corruption of power; a power which had been conferred on them to
preserve liberty itself! These factions often shook, by their
jealousies, their fears, and their hatreds, that divided land, which
groaned whenever they witnessed the "Ultramontanes" descending from
their Alps and their Apennines. Petrarch, in a noble invective, warmed
by Livy and ancient Rome, impatiently beheld the French and the Germans
passing the mounts. "Enemies," he cries, "so often conquered prepare to
strike with swords which formerly served us to raise our trophies: shall
the mistress of the world bear chains forged by hands which she has so
often bound to their backs?" Machiavel, in his "Exhortations to Free
Italy from the Barbarians," rouses his country against their changeable
masters, the Germans, the French, and the Spaniards; closing with the
verse of Petrarch, that short shall be the battle for which virtue arms
to show the world--

che l' antico valore
Ne gl' Italici cuor non e ancor morto.

Nor has this sublime patriotism declined even in more recent times; I
cannot resist from preserving in this place a sonnet by Filicaja, which
I could never read without participating in the agitation of the writer
for the ancient glory of his degenerated country! The energetic
personification of the close perhaps surpasses even his more celebrated
sonnet, preserved in Lord Byron's notes to the fourth canto of "Childe
Harold."

Dov' e ITALIA, il tuo braccio? e a che ti servi
Tu dell' altrui? non e s' io scorgo il vero,
Di chi t' offende il defensor men fero:
Ambe nemici sono, ambo fur servi.
Cosi dunque l' onor, cosi conservi
Gli avanzi tu del glorioso Impero?
Cosi al valor, cosi al valor primiero
Che a te fede giuro, la fede osservi?
Or va; repudia il valor prisco, e sposa
L' ozio, e fra il sangue, i gemiti, e le strida
Nel periglio maggior dormi e riposa!
Dormi, Adultera vil! fin che omicida
Spada ultrice ti svegli, e sonnacchiosa,
E nuda in braccio al tuo fedel t'uccida!

Oh, Italy! where is