letters of Foscolo, the novels of Guerrazzi, and the tender melody of
Bellini. Recent literature has exhibited the conditions under which
Italian Liberals strive, and the method of expiating their
self-devotion. The novels of Ruffini, the letters of the Countess
d'Ossoli, the rhetoric of Gavazzi, and the parliamentary reports of
Gladstone, the leading reviews, the daily journals, intercourse with
political refugees, and the personal observations of travel, have, more
or less definitely, caused the problem called the "Italian Question" to
come nearer to our sympathies than any other European exigency apart
from practical interests. Moreover, the complicated and dubious aspect
of the subject, viewed by transatlantic eyes, has, within the last ten
years, been in a great measure dispelled by experimental facts. That
Italy needs chiefly to be _let alone_, to achieve independence and
realize a noble development, civic, economical, and social, every
intelligent traveller who crosses the Austrian frontier and enters the
Sardinian state, knows.

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an indigenous and superseded race; their industry, civil rights,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