Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/440

456 old enemy, Austria, and the dispute growing every year more bitter, assumed, at length, large proportions. Carlo Alberto took, in this quarrel, still more and more openly, the part of Piedmont and Italy. This made him in a high degree popular. People began to talk about war with Austria, and a private letter of the king was made public in what he wrote: “If Providence send us a war of liberation, I shall mount, with both my sons, and place myself at the head of it.”

But at this moment, Italy demanded, above all things, internal reforms, free constitutions, and many and various were the claimants. But there was one voice which raised itself, which gathered all into one chorus, because that voice expressed the unconscious wishes of all, and gave the word which many sought to spell. It was the exiled Gioberti who gave this word, in his work on the moral and civil primates of Italy—Primato morale e civile d'Italia. This new primate should not be a military dominion, like the old Roman; it should not be one of the fine arts, like that of medieval Italy,—no, it should be, above all, a supremacy of human morality, beauty, and order, in which Italy, as a union of free states, should stand forth as an example amongst the people of the earth, and under a spiritual primate (the Pope), represent the kingdom of God upon earth. The means for this new formation were devised with a tact and practical insight, rare in Italy,—if still not free from error,—and with clearness and moderation. The style and composition of the work were those of the most perfect master, often of the inspired seer. The purest