“Italy is too long,” said the Italian. We were coming into Turin in the dawn, amid burning mountains of rosy snow, and the train was moving slowly, in hesitation, with pauses for reflection. “The line is single in places,” he explained. “Italy is too narrow, too cramped by mountain-chains, and above all too long. It is the trouble behind all our politics. There are three Italies, three horizontal strata, that do not interfuse—the industrial and intelligent North, the stagnant and superstitious South, and the centre with Rome which is betwixt and between.”

“But there is far more clericalism in the North than the South,” I said. “The Church party is a political force.”

“Precisely what proves my case. In the North everything is more efficient, even to the forces of reaction. The clericals are better organised, and are, moreover, supported by the propertied atheists in the interests of order. But the North is Europe—Germany, if you will—the South is already Africa.” The train stopped again. He groaned. “No unity possible.”

“No unity?” I exclaimed. “And what about Garibaldi and Mazzini and United Italy?”

“It is a phrase. Italy is too long.”

I pondered over his words, and in imagination I saw again all the Risorgimento museums, all the tablets in all the loggias and town halls recording those who had died for the Union of Italy, all the statues of all the heroes, all the streets and piazzas dedicated to them, while in my ears resounded all the artillery of applause booming at that very moment throughout the length and narrowness of Italy in celebration of the Jubilee of the Departure of the Thousand from Quarto.