Italy has been less happy. The pretensions of Feudalism here commingled with the pretensions of City-States. Petty princes and petty republics, restless with local sovereignty, constituted together a perpetual discord. That beauty which one of her poets calls a “fatal gift” tempted the foreigner. Disunited Italy became an easy prey. Genius strove in the bitterness of despair, while this exquisite land, where History adds to the charms of Nature and gilds anew the golden fields, sank at last to become, in the audacious phrase of Napoleon, simply a geographical name. A checker-board of separate States, it was little else. It had a place on the map, as in the memory, but no place in the present. It performed no national part. It did nothing for imitation or remembrance. Thus it continued, a fearful example to mankind. Meanwhile the sentiment of Nationality began to stir. At last it broke forth like the pent-up lava from its own Vesuvius, and Garibaldi was its conductor. Separate States, renouncing local pretensions, became greater still as parts of the great whole, and Italy stood forth a Nation, to testify against the intolerable jargon of State pretensions. All hail to this heroic revival, where dissevered parts have been brought together, as were those of the ancient Deity, and shaped anew into a form of beauty and power! But Germany is the most instructive example. Here, from generation to generation, have State pretensions triumphed, perversely postponing that National Unity which is the longing of the German heart. Stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic and the Alps, penetrated by great rivers, possessing an harmonious expanse of territory, speaking one language, filled with the same intellectual life, and enjoying a common name, which has been historic from the days of Tacitus, Germany, like France, seems formed for unity. Martin Luther addressed one of his grand letters _An die Deutsche Nation_ (To the German Nation); and these words are always touching to Germans as the image of what they desire so much. Thus far the great longing has failed. Even the Empire, where all were gathered under one imperial head, was only a variegated patchwork of States. Feudalism, in its most extravagant pretensions, still prevails. Confederation takes the place of Nationality, and this vast country, with all its elements of unity, is only a discordant conglomerate. North and South are inharmonious, Prussia and Austria representing two opposite sections. Other divisions have been more perplexing. Not to speak of Circles, or groups, each with a diet of its own, which once existed, I mention simply the later division into thirty-nine States, differing in government and in extent, being monarchies, principalities, dukedoms, and free cities, all proportionately represented in a general council or diet, and proportionately bound to the common defence, but every one filled with State egotism. So complete was this disjunction, and such its