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]