school.[7] There is no profession that I know more favourable to the growth of noble sentiment and manly action than that of the soldier; and to its beneficial action in the formation of States every page of history bears flaming testimony. War, in fact, is the principal agent in producing that unification so absolutely necessary to social existence, but which is lost so soon as the headship of the common father of the expanded clan ceases to be recognised. Thus it was under the compulsion of war from their Lombardian neighbours on the west and Sclavonians on the east that the petty democratic communities, which after the disruption of the Roman Empire occupied the Venetian isles, found themselves, in the year 697, obliged to elect a king for life, wisely masking his absolute authority under the name of Doge or Duke. And in a similar fashion the situation of the Piedmontese, constantly forced to defend themselves against Gallican and Teutonic ambition, begot in them a stoutness of self-assertion and a general manhood of character which up to the present hour has placed them in favourable contrast to the inhabitants of the southern half of the peninsula; and the manhood displayed by the Counts of Savoy in asserting their independence against great odds was no doubt the cause why, in the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, their lords were allowed to assume and maintain the title of kings--a circumstance which gave rise to the saying of Frederick the Great of Prussia, that the lords of Savoy were kings by virtue of their locality.[8] This is certainly true, not only of Sardinia, but of all States that ever rose above the loose aggregation of the original townships. It was the necessity of adjusting matters with troublesome neighbours that caused a perpetual succession of petty wars; and these could not be conducted without a prolongation of the power of the successful general, which acted practically as a kingship. The successful general in such times did not require to usurp a title which the people were forward to force upon him; and only a few, we may imagine, like Gideon (Judges viii. 22), had virtue enough to remain contented with the distinction belonging to a private station when the grace of the crown and the authority of the sceptre were formally pressed upon them by a grateful people. So in Greece we find an early kingship signalised by the names of Ægeus, Theseus, and Codrus; so in Rome a succession of seven kings, more or less distinctly outlined, the last of whom, Tarquin the Proud, stands forward as the head of the great Latin league, and entering in this capacity into a formal treaty with Carthage, the great commercial State of the Mediterranean. Closely connected with war, or, more properly, as the natural development of it in its more advanced stages, we must mention CONQUEST; that is, the violent imposition of the results of a foreign civilisation on the native social foundations of any country. Here, no doubt, there may