fe, understand and practise what
is meant by that.' [2]

CHAPTER V

THE POPE LIBERATOR

1844-1847

Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.--The Petty Princes--Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand.

The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the
liberation of Italy will have passed away. Already a generation has
grown up which can but faintly realise the passionate hopes and fears
with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory
were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set
foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy
so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence
that it never will again. Italy rising from the grave was the living
romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common
level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work
or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained
enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some
who asked what was all this to them? What were the 'extraneous
Austrian Emperor,' or the 'old chimera of a Pope' (Carlyle's
designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who
were deeply attached still to the 'Great Hinge on which Europe
depended,' and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples,
about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of
the _Quarterly Review_. But on the whole, English men and women--in
mind half Italian, whether they will it or not, from the day they
begin to read their own literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from
Shakespeare to Shelley, from Shelley to Rossetti and Swinburne--were
united at that time in warmth of feeling towards struggling Italy as
they have been united in no political sentiment relating to another
nation, and in few concerning their own country.

It would be vain to expect that the record of Italian vicissitudes
during the years when the fate of Italy hung in the balance can awake
or renew the spellbound interest caused by the events themselves. The
reader of recent history is like the novel reader who begins at the
last chapter--he is too familiar with how it all ended to be keenly
affected by the development of the plot. Yet it is plain that we are
in a better position to appreciate the process of development than was
the case when the issue remained uncertain. We can estimate more
accurately