If it was not strange that Ione thus enthralled the Egyptian, far less strange was it that she had captured, as suddenly as irrevocably, the bright and sunny heart of the Athenian.  The gladness of a temperament which seemed woven from the beams of light had led Glaucus into pleasure.  He obeyed no more vicious dictates when he wandered into the dissipations of his time, than the exhilarating voices of youth and health.  He threw the brightness of his nature over every abyss and cavern through which he strayed.  His imagination dazzled him, but his heart never was corrupted.  Of far more penetration than his companions deemed, he saw that they sought to prey upon his riches and his youth:  but he despised wealth save as the means of enjoyment, and youth was the great sympathy that united him to them.  He felt, it is true, the impulse of nobler thoughts and higher aims than in pleasure could be indulged:  but the world was one vast prison, to which the Sovereign of Rome was the Imperial gaoler; and the very virtues, which in the free days of Athens would have made him ambitious, in the slavery of earth made him inactive and supine.  For in that unnatural and bloated civilization, all that was noble in emulation was forbidden.  Ambition in the regions of a despotic and luxurious court was but the contest of flattery and craft.  Avarice had become the sole ambition—­men desired praetorships and provinces only as the license to pillage, and government was but the excuse of rapine.  It is in small states that glory is most active and pure—­the more confined the limits of the circle, the more ardent the patriotism.  In small states, opinion is concentrated and strong—­every eye reads your actions—­your public motives are blended with your private ties—­every spot in your narrow sphere is crowded with forms familiar since your childhood—­the applause of your citizens is like the caresses of your friends.  But in large states, the city is but the court:  the provinces—­unknown to you, unfamiliar in customs, perhaps in language—­have no claim on your patriotism, the ancestry of their inhabitants is not yours.  In the court you desire favor instead of glory; at a distance from the court, public opinion has vanished from you, and self-interest has no counterpoise.

Italy, Italy, while I write, your skies are over me—­your seas flow beneath my feet, listen not to the blind policy which would unite all your crested cities, mourning for their republics, into one empire; false, pernicious delusion! your only hope of regeneration is in division.  Florence, Milan, Venice, Genoa, may be free once more, if each is free.  But dream not of freedom for the whole while you enslave the parts; the heart must be the centre of the system, the blood must circulate freely everywhere; and in vast communities you behold but a bloated and feeble giant, whose brain is imbecile, whose limbs are dead, and who pays in disease and weakness the penalty of transcending the natural proportions of health and vigour.