Page:Readings in European History Vol 2.djvu/52

 14 Readings in European History Italy op- pressed by foreign powers. Italy prays for a deliverer. changes glorious for himself and beneficial to the whole Italian people, it seems to me that so many conditions com- bine to further such an enterprise, that I know of no time so favorable to it as the present. And if, as I have said, it was necessary in order to display the valor of Moses that the children of Israel should be slaves in Egypt, and to show the greatness and courage of Cyrus that the Persians should be oppressed by the Medes, and to illustrate the excellence of Theseus that the Athenians should be scat- tered and divided, so at this hour, to prove the worth of some Italian hero, it was required that Italy should be brought to her present abject condition, be more a slave than the Hebrew, more oppressed than the Persian, more disunited than the Athenian, without a head, without order, beaten, spoiled, torn in pieces, overrun, and abandoned to destruction in every shape. But though, heretofore, glimmerings may have been dis- cerned in this man or that, whence it might be conjectured that he was ordained by God for Italy's redemption, neverthe- less it has afterwards been seen in the further course of his actions that Fortune has disowned him ; so that our coun- try, left almost without life, still waits to know who it is that is to heal her bruises, to put an end to the devastation and plunder of Lombardy and to the exactions and imposts of Naples and Tuscany, and to stanch those wounds of hers which long neglect has changed into running sores. We see how she prays God to send some one to rescue her from these barbarous cruelties and oppressions. We see too how ready and eager she is to follow any standard, were there only some one to raise it. But at present we see no one except in your illustrious house (preeminent by its vir- tues and good fortune, and favored by God and by the Church, whose headship it now holds) who could undertake the part of a deliverer. But for you this will not be too hard a task, if you keep before your eyes the lives and actions of those whom I have named above. . . . If then your illustrious house should seek to follow the ex- ample of those great men who have delivered their country