History tells the story of every great nation on the face of the earth in three short words, growth, supremacy, decline. Vary the theme as you may in the countless histories of countless peoples; subdivide the course of its progress as you will, allowing for different local causes and different local phenomena, the true philosophy of history teaches that no real departure from this natural development is possible. But what if by the violent intervention of some new and entirely foreign force, another development and another life is given to the inanimate ashes of the old? What if some nation, fresh from the woods and fields of the childhood of its growth, come with overwhelming yet preserving strength and infuse new blood into the withered veins of its predecessor? This is the problem we now have before us. How many writers of Italian history have entitled this chapter in its development "A new Italian Nation formed"! It is not the old glories of Rome, which had been Italy, returning; it is a new Italian nation formed. Each word tells a story of its own. It is not the old galvanized to a second life; it is the new superimposed, violently if you will, upon it. We do not hear of Athens or of Rome, of an Alexander or of a Caesar, of a city or of a man. It is an "Italian nation." It is the individualism of the independent spirit of the North, which "forms" a nation from the exhausted remains of the development of centralization of the South. The new idea of distinct nationality among races of kindred stock was already at work, even though it did not reach a formal expression till the Treaty of Verdun, more than two hundred and fifty years later. I do not mean to imply that we must in any measure ignore the passive force and influence of the old forms on the new. The old veins receive the new blood; the new torrent, overrunning everything at first with the strength of its new life, will find again, even if it deepen, the channel of the old river: a vanquished civilization will always subdue and at the same time raise its barbarous conquerors, if they come of a stock capable of appreciating civilizing influences. In the present case this means that the men of the North brought the new ideas that were to form modern history, and let their growth be directed and assisted, while they were yet too young to stand alone, by some of the framework which had been built up by the long experience of their Southern neighbors.