We dwell longer on Italy than its geographical dimensions would warrant, but that peninsula is deeply interesting to the world, not only on account of the religious relations to which we have referred, but from the fact that for centuries a foreign arm has held it down; and while half of the world beside was rising into consequence, by the science and scientific men that Italy sent forth, Italy alone of all the geographical divisions of the earth seemed to be without profit from her own great men. Because she _did_ decay, men believed that the elements of her prosperity were exhausted; because she ceased to hold the preeminence which she once possessed, it was deemed that the seal of ruin was set upon her. These suppositions are wrong; and the new movements in that peninsula show that the spirit of man is yet active, and _now_ active to man's great good. What Italy needed was concert. What other nations practiced were constant attempts to foment jealousies among her different States, and create a demand for foreign interference and the presence of foreign troops. At present a dream of the ancient republic is the animating cause (or rather perhaps a sense of the capabilities of Italy for the new republicanism of the time) with leaders; who appeal to the recollections of the past because a sense of the present is not to be depended on in the many; and the shout for the old federative republics of past centuries awakens the pride of those whose patriotism might not be strong enough to lead them to the sacrifices which the object demands. There seems to be necessary to the Italian mind a hope of regaining something that has been _lost_, and if this is rightly used there can be no doubt that the people will attain to something they _need_. The republics of elder Italy are no more the proper object for Italian enterprise, than would be the old colonial dependencies for the efforts of Americans. But Italy must be aroused; she must be called up to some general object; her great men must be stimulated to useful efforts, and her humbler citizens must be enticed away from insurrectionary movements to revolutionary action, and that cry which the soonest rouses and unites them is the true watchword of independence. Some proper hand, some well endowed mind must lead them in the right path--must set their faces and direct their efforts toward the proper object. The alarm cry may be the same, though the object of rising be opposite to that announced. The same bells and the same peels would call up the citizens of Florence to withstand or divert an inundation of the Arno which would be used to arouse them to check the destructive progress of a conflagration.