Glimpses of History

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1866. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... VI. COUNT CAVOUR. WHEN a nation assumes, for the first time in its history, the rank of a superior power, civilized man regards the event with sympathy. With how much greater gratification do we behold the regeneration of a people, which in former ages discovered a conspicuous superiority, but which, by the process of despotism and consequent apathy, has been for centuries an object of universal pity, and whose later degradation has seemed the more hopeless when contrasted with its former grandeur! While the revolutions of modern Europe have transferred the ascendency from nation to nation, and have alternately elevated and depressed almost every country between the Atlantic and the Caucasus, Italy alone, the ancient seat of world-wide empire, has remained listless and stagnant under the oppression of the hierarchy, the Bourbons, and the Hapsburgs. The Reformation, prolific in the grand results of a purer religion and a more vigorous enlightenment, swept by the land of the Caesars, and left the unhappy descendants of the greatest of races stranded in the cruel and superstitious ignorance of the dark ages. While England, France, Spain, and the German states -- dependent provinces which received viceroys from and paid a humble tribute to the early emperors -- have successively assumed the highest elevation of power among the nations, their once queenly mistress has been overridden by a crafty priesthood, and has been retained in slavish submission by a foreign and mercenary armament. Divided into numerous states and municipalities, each independent of, and most of them hostile to, the others; distracted by the bitter strifes of factions rivalling "one another in the same overwhelming passion; held all the while in debasing thraldom by the fulminations of ambitious...