My first chart must be geographical. I want you to have a clearly
dissected and closely fitted notion of the natural boundaries of her
states, and their relations to surrounding ones. Lay hold first,
firmly, of your conception of the valleys of the Po and the Arno,
running counter to each other--opening east and opening west,--Venice
at the end of the one, Pisa at the end of the other.
48. These two valleys--the hearts of Lombardy and Etruria--virtually
contain the life of Italy. They are entirely different in character:
Lombardy, essentially luxurious and worldly, at this time rude in art,
but active; Etruria, religious, intensely imaginative, and inheriting
refined forms of art from before the days of Porsenna.
49. South of these, in mid-Italy, you have Romagna,--the valley of the
Tiber. In that valley, decayed Rome, with her lust of empire
inextinguishable;--no inheritance of imaginative art, nor power of it;
dragging her own ruins hourly into more fantastic ruin, and defiling
her faith hourly with more fantastic guilt.
South of Romagna, you have the kingdoms of Calabria and Sicily,---Magna
Graecia, and Syracuse, in decay;----strange spiritual fire from the
Saracenic east still lighting the volcanic land, itself laid all in
ashes.
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