A greater contrast, as regards productive industry, intellectual
enterprise, religious progress, comfort, and happiness, no adjacent
countries ever exhibited; constitutional freedom, an unrestricted
press, toleration, and public education on the one hand, and foreign
bayonets, espionage, and priestcraft on the other, explain the anomaly.
In Venice the very trophies of national life are labelled in a foreign
tongue, the _caffes_ of Milan resound with Teutonic gutturals, and
under the arcades of Bologna every other face wears the yellow beard of
the North; yet the family portraits in the vast palace-chambers, the
eyes and dialect of the people, the monumental inscriptions, announce
an indigenous and superseded race; their industry, civil rights,
property, and free expression in art, literature, and even speech,
being forcibly and systematically repressed: while in the mountains of
Savoy, the streets of Turin, and the harbor of Genoa, the stir and
zest, the productiveness, and the felicity of national life greet the
senses and gladden the soul. Statistics evidence what observation
hints; Cavour wins the respect of Europe; D'Azeglio illustrates the
inspiration which liberty yields to genius; journalism ventilates
political rancor; debate neutralizes aggressive prejudice; physical
resources become available; talent finds scope, character
self-assertion; Protestantism builds altars, patriotism shrines; and
genuine Italian nationality has a vital existence so palpably
reproachful of circumjacent stagnation, ruin, and wrong, that no laws
or material force can interpose a permanent obstacle to its indefinite
extension and salutary reign.
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