civilization of
the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to
traverse an orbit of its own. It too is destined to experience in
full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods
of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative
effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the
material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps
also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of
contentment with the goal attained. And yet this goal will only
be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit,
and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which,
just when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever
set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.

Italy

Our aim is to exhibit the last act of this great historical drama,
to relate the ancient history of the central peninsula projecting
from the northern continent into the Mediterranean. It is formed
by the mountain-system of the Apennines branching off in a southern
direction from the western Alps. The Apennines take in the first
instance a south-eastern course between the broader gulf of the
Mediterranean on the west, and the narrow one on the east; and in the
close vicinity of the latter they attain their greatest elevation,
which, however, scarce reaches the line of perpetual snow, in
the Abruzzi. From the Abruzzi the chain continues in a southern
direction, at first undivided and of considerable height; after
a depression which formsa hill-country, it splits into a somewhat
flattened succession of heights towards the south-east and a more
rugged chain towards the south, and in both directions terminates
in the formation of narrow peninsulas.

The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the
Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically,
nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land
of mountain and hill, the Italy whose history is here to engage
our attention. It was not till the seventh century of the city
that the coast-district from Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the
eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy.
The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but
the Apennines. This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into
a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and
enclosing many valleys and table-l