Excerpt from Italy of the Italians Since that memorable year, 1870, Italy has, happily, ceased to be a geographical expression, as Prince Metternich contemptuously phrased it. Nevertheless, though thousands of travellers over-run her fair borders in the course of each year, in ever increasing numbers, to the greater proportion she still remains little else than a geographical expression, and'her citizens are regarded either as the staffage to a lovely landscape or as the custodians of her artistic treasures. These travellers, too, seldom know the language of the land and hence are apt to get their information from guides, hotel porters, cabmen, and others the like. As a result they may see towns and museums but they get little or no idea of Italy's real life and civilization. Few stop even to wonder what are the impulses, the aims, the hopes, the ambitions that cause the heart of this land to pulsate with energy, that virtue on which her greatest poet, Dante, laid such stress. Few enquire what is her present position in the world of European thought. What she gave us in the past, how, together with Greece, we owe her all our culture, is familiar enough. Less familiar, on the other hand, is her contribution to the modern move ment, her bequest to the fabrics of contemporary science, art, literature, and philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.