The popular indignation excited by this incident was in proportion with the importance attached to outward observances of religion in Catholic countries; the government had to protect the Archbishop of Turin from violence, while, at the same time, they sent him for a month to the Citadel for having forbidden his clergy to obey the law on the Foro Ecclesiastico.  He and one or two of the other bishops were afterwards expelled from the kingdom.  An unwelcome necessity, but whose was the fault?  In other countries, where the privileges claimed by the Piedmontese clergy had been abolished for centuries, did the bishops dictate revolt against the law?  If not, why should they do so in Piedmont?

The successor of Santa Rosa in the ministry was Count Cavour, who thus in 1850 for the first time became an official servant of the state.  When D’Azeglio submitted the appointment to the King, Victor Emmanuel remarked that, though he did not object to it in the least, they had better take care, as this man would turn them all out before long.  This man was, in fact, to stand at the helm of Piedmont, with short intervals, till he died, and was to carve out from the block of formless marble, not the Italy of sublime dreams, which, owing her deliverance to her sons alone, should arise immaculate from the grave a Messiah among the nations, but the actual Italy which has been accomplished; imperfect and peccable as human things mostly are, belonging rather to prose than to poetry, to matter than to spirit, but, for all that, an Italy which is one and is free.

Fifty years ago a great English writer pointed out what the real Italy would be, if it were to be; ’The prosperity of nations as of individuals,’ wrote Mr Ruskin in one of his earliest papers, ’is cold and hard-hearted and forgetful.  The dead lie, indeed, trampled down by the living; the place thereof shall know them no more, for that place is not in the hearts of the survivors, for whose interest they have made way.  But adversity and ruin point to the sepulchre, and it is not trodden on; to the chronicle, and it does not decay.  Who would substitute the rush of a new nation, the struggle of an awakening power, for the dreamy sleep of Italy’s desolation, for the sweet silence of melancholy thought, her twilight time of everlasting memories?’

[Illustration:  COUNT CAVOUR]

There is the case, stated with beautiful lucidity, of the somewhat ghoulish dilettantism which, enjoying tombs, would condemn all mankind to breathe their atmosphere.  It is not, however, in order to discuss that view that the passage is quoted, but because of its relevancy to what Cavour attempted and what he did.  Never was there a mind which cherished fewer illusions.  He believed that the pursuit of the unattainable was still more a political crime than a political blunder.  He was, in this, what is now called an opportunist, and he was also an opportunist in believing that though in politics you can choose