Far otherwise is it, with Sardinia.  Many years since, the writer of these pages ventured to predict that the time must come when Sardinia would lead the van of Italian civilisation, and take proud place amongst the greater nations of Europe.  In the great portion of this population there is visible the new blood of a young race; it is not, as with other Italian States, a worn-out stock; you do not see there a people fallen, proud of the past, and lazy amidst ruins, but a people rising, practical, industrious, active; there, in a word, is an eager youth to be formed to mature development, not a decrepit age to be restored to bloom and muscle.  Progress is the great characteristic of the Sardinian state.  Leave it for five years; visit it again, and you behold improvement.  When you enter the kingdom and find, by the very skirts of its admirable roads, a raised footpath for the passengers and travellers from town to town, you become suddenly aware that you are in a land where close attention to the humbler classes is within the duties of a government.  As you pass on from the more purely Italian part of the population,—­from the Genoese country into that of Piedmont,—­the difference between a new people and an old, on which I have dwelt, becomes visible in the improved cultivation of the soil, the better habitations of the labourer, the neater aspect of the towns, the greater activity in the thoroughfares.  To the extraordinary virtues of the King, as King, justice is scarcely done, whether in England or abroad.  Certainly, despite his recent concessions, Charles Albert is not and cannot be at heart, much of a constitutional reformer; and his strong religious tendencies, which, perhaps unjustly, have procured him in philosophical quarters the character of a bigot, may link him more than his political, with the cause of the Father of his Church.  But he is nobly and preeminently national, careful of the prosperity and jealous of the honour of his own state, while conscientiously desirous of the independence of Italy.  His attention to business, is indefatigable.  Nothing escapes his vigilance.  Over all departments of the kingdom is the eye of a man ever anxious to improve.  Already the silk manufactures of Sardinia almost rival those of Lyons:  in their own departments the tradesmen of Turin exhibit an artistic elegance and elaborate finish, scarcely exceeded in the wares of London and Paris.  The King’s internal regulations are admirable; his laws, administered with the most impartial justice—­his forts and defences are in that order, without which, at least on the Continent, no land is safe—­his army is the most perfect in Italy.  His wise genius extends itself to the elegant as to the useful arts—­an encouragement that shames England, and even France, is bestowed upon the School for Painters, which has become one of the ornaments of his illustrious reign.  The character of the main part of the population, and the geographical position of his country, assist