No wonder then that the citizens of Italy should have prospered amid their domestic broils, their factions, their revolutions--even amid the sanguinary conflicts of the Guelph and the Ghibeline. If the energy and elasticity of the mind be not destroyed by the pressure of despotism, it is curious to contemplate the wonderfully recuperative powers of man, and to behold the appalling difficulties which he can surmount, undismayed and unscathed. You may prostrate him to day, but the energy and vitality that is within him will raise him up on the morrow.[14] Of all sorts of destruction, of every kind of death, that is the worst, because the most productive of melancholy consequences, which reaches the mind itself. That system of government which slays the mind, is the system which, at the same time reaches the sanctuary of the heart, overthrows the purity of morals, and forges the fetters for the slave. And such a government as this have the Spaniard the Frenchman and the German rivetted but too fatally upon Italy. The day that saw those modern Goths and Vandals pouring their mercenary hordes over the Alps to rob and plunder, was a black day for Italy, and well might the friend of that lovely land have then exclaimed in the language of the poet, "Oh! Rome, the spoiler or the spoil of France, From Brennus to the Bourbon, never, never Shall foreign standard to thy walls advance, But Tiber shall become a mournful river." [Footnote 14: Whilst Italy was free, there was no country which could repair its losses with so much despatch; the town that was sacked and burnt to-day, would be built up and stored with wealth on the morrow, and the losses of one excited the sympathies and support of all those engaged in the same cause. When the Emperor Frederic carried fire and sword through the Milanese territory, and left the treasury of that state completely exhausted, we are told that the rich citizens soon replenished it from their private purses, contenting themselves in the mean time with coarse bread, and cloaks of black stuff. And at the command of their consuls they left Milan to join their fellow citizens in rebuilding _with their own hands_ the walls and houses of Tortona, Rosata, Tricate, Galiate, and other towns, which had suffered in the contest for the common cause.] The independence of the little states of Italy is now gone, and with it all the real greatness of that country. The power that now sways the Italian, emanates from a nation situated afar off on the banks of the Danube. And can we wonder while the Austrian soldier stands sentinel in the Italian cities, that their citizens should "Creep, Crouching and crab-like, through their sapping streets." But enough of a spectacle so sad as this![15]