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In conclusion, we may ask how Frankish society in Palestine compares with Frankish society in Cyprus and in the Latin principalities of the present Greek kingdom. Very different from either Frankish Palestine or Frankish Greece was the condition of the kingdom of Cyprus, created by a mere accident of the Crusades, which nominally continued the tradition of the kingdom of Jerusalem. While the reason of the latter's existence was war, Cyprus was essentially a commercial state, to which the loss of Acre was a blessing in disguise. So long as the kings of Cyprus, in their capacity of kings of Jerusalem, had territory on the opposite coast of Syria, they were necessarily involved in continental wars, and could not devote themselves to the development of their own island; as was the case of the kings of England, so long as they held the damnosa hereditas of the Plantagenets in France. Cyprus was, like England, defended by the sea; like England, she became one of the marts of the world, in an age when the crusading spirit had died away, and trade was the attraction that led men to the East. The popes, by prohibiting trade with the Saracens after the loss of the Holy Land, procured for Cyprus a monopoly; and Famagosta surpassed Constantinople, Venice, and Alexandria. Moreover, warned by the example of Jerusalem, the kings of Cyprus cut down the privileges of the nobles, who were denied the right of coinage and jurisdiction over the middle class. Consequently, the Cypriote monarchy was more independent, and continued to prosper until it allowed-and this should be to us a warning-foreign competitors, under the guise of commerce, to creep into its cities and ultimately to dictate its policy.

All the Latin states in the East, whether in Jerusalem, Cyprus, or Greece proper, presented examples of that difficult political experiment-the rule of a small alien minority over a large native majority of a different religion, an experiment worked most successfully in those states, like Lesbos under the Genoese Gattilusi, where the Latin rulers became assimilated with the ruled. But in Frankish Greece the feudal states were not commercial; and the Venetian and Genoese colonies were, except in Negroponte, quite distinct from them. The Frank conquerors of Greece did not go thither with

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the noble aims which led some of the leaders of the First Crusade to the Holy Land; on the contrary, they turned aside from the recovery of the Holy City to partition a Christian Empire. Yet the moral standard of the Franks in Greece was much higher than that of their predecessors in Palestine, or their contemporaries in Cyprus. Possibly, the reason was that they lived healthier lives, and had fewer temptations. Big maritime commercial towns, like Tyre and Acre, and Famagosta, did not exist, and country life was more developed. Certainly, the 'Chronicles of the Morea' are more edifying reading than the 'Letters' of Jacques de Vitry on the condition of Acre at the time of his appointment as its bishop in 1216. But in one respect Frankish Palestine and Frankish Greece present the same strange phenomenon-that union of antiquity with the Middle Ages, of the biblical and the classical with the romantic, which inspired the second part of Faust. To find the feudal system installed at Hebron and Athens, at Shechem and Sparta, at Tiberias and Thebes, to read of Princes of Galilee and of Princes of Achaia, causes surprise only surpassed by that which we should have felt in August 1914, had we been told that before four Christmases had passed, Australians and New Zealanders would have shared in the taking of Jerusalem.

WILLIAM MILLER.

Art. 8.-THE IDEALS AND ASPIRATIONS OF ITALY.

1. Laudi del Cielo, del Mare, della Terra, e degli eroi (1905); La Nave (1908); Le Canzoni della Gesta d'Oltramare (1912). By Gabriele d'Annunzio. Milan : Treves. 2. L'Altare. By Sem Benelli. Milan: Treves, 1916. ALTHOUGH the disaster at Caporetto in October last may have modified in some measure the hopes and expectations of Italy in the region of practical politics, the ideals and aspirations with which a large part of her people entered the war remain untouched. They lie too deep to be affected by the transient evolution of the present campaign, and will come to the surface again in future developments of Italian history.

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Doubtless each of the nations now at war holds somewhere in the back of its mind an ideal conception of itself and of what it would wish to be. Some of them, perhaps, are hardly conscious of its presence; others possess a very clear-cut notion of their ideal and its aims. This ideal concept has no very close or direct connexion with the practical politics of the race; it is not the measure of what the nations actually hope to achieve. But it is the dream that lies behind their whole attitude and action, it is the master-light of all their being,' the very root and ground and habitat of their patriotism, the spirit which upholds and cherishes and has power to make' them endure and forget the groans and sufferings which inevitably mark the via dolorosa of their destiny. Without some such ideal conception of themselves, could the nations face and overcome the agonies by which they are now affronted? And so, too, of their ideal aims and aspirations; never, perhaps, to be realised, yet consciously or unconsciously moulding the type and forming the character which the race shall produce:

'All that I longed to be,

And was not, comforts me.'

'Comforts'-yes, and indeed creates.

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In this country we have not personified England' as 'France' and 'Italy' are personified for the Frenchman and the Italian. It is the 'country,' the land and the people blended, which claim and win the love and the

On them that worship the ruthless Will,

On them that dream, doth His judgement wait;
Dreams of the proud man, making great

And greater ever

Things which are not of God. . . . For all is vain,
The pulse of the heart, the plot of the brain,
That striveth beyond the laws that live.'

And yet the appearance of strength displayed by this type, its promise of very material successes, its flattery of the orgoglio umano and of the brain, the fallacious lucidity of its deductive method, relying on arbitrary premises, render it dangerously attractive. It is but too close to a large part of our human desires; it appeals to our material appetites; and it has thrown over the nations, Italy among them, a sort of glamour mingled of fear and admiration for the blond brute.'

With France, also, the ideal is a race-picture, an autoportrait, a vision of 'La France,' so clear, so clean, so net; a soul burning with 'a hard gem-like flame,' yielding the purest light of the intellect; a personality elegant, finished, artistic to the finger-tips; lean and spare like some master of the rapier, supple and flashing as his blade; bursting, in the very crisis of the struggle, into that immortal phrase, Debout les Morts.

What, then, is Italy's ideal? The Italy to whom Italians have sworn allegiance is an Italy of historical continuity in the spiritual, if not yet entirely in the political world; the Italy of Rome, the Renaissance and the Risorgimento; the Italy to whom the West owes three such gifts as the Law, the Church and the Arts, and three such splendid languages as French, Spanish and Italian; the Madre antica of European civilisation, and now the sorella neonata, the youngest born among the nations of the European family, drawing knowledge and wisdom from her centuries of past achievement, and hope and strength from her new birth. She is the vase that holds the aroma of those ancient words fides, pietas, jus, officia, honos, decor, and a dozen others, which mean so much for mankind and are so profoundly humane that they can take on the nuance of later ethical teaching and yet retain their antique connotation; a personality more conscious of itself than England, more humane, may be, than France, a middle term between the two;

the parent of our ancient culture as opposed to that new-fangled idol on the Spree. That is how Italians think of their Italy when they abstract the ideal of their country from the Italy of work-a-day politics. Ideals are, of course, idealised.

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The religious fervour of the races, where any may be found, is drawn within the orbit of their various racial ideals and coloured by them, and finds expression in literature so true to the race and yet so diverse in quality as Christ in Flanders,' compared, for instance, with 'Lettres d'un Soldat.' In obedience to its worship of brute force and under pressure of its ideal, Germany has evolved that pleasing type of deity, Jehovah with the attributes of Moloch, whose church is the parade-ground, whose liturgy is the drill-book, whose ritual is the goosestep, whose fitting litany is 'The Hymn of Hate.' Contrast that hymn with the expression of Italian religious sentiment, where it exists at all-the gracious presence of the Madonna, the august beneficence of the Padre Eterno; for that is how an Italian feels it if he feels it in any sense. There is no break in the secular continuity; the historical forms are retained and are sufficient; the new spirit evoked by the war, the blending of Italian patriotism with Italian piety, so dear to the heart of the saintly peasant of Riese, Pope Pius X, finds a ready home within the ancient formulæ. A soldier of the line, a Bersagliere, sent me from the Italian front, from trenches 6000 feet above the sea, beaten by snowstorm and blizzard, three beautiful hymns circulating among the men up there who care for such things. They are appeals to the heart of the Madonna and the pity and loving-kindness of the Father for help in human suffering and for aid to Italy. I quote two.

A MARIA

PER LA VITTORIA DELLE NOSTRE ARMI.

'All' armi Italiche su estremi lidi,
Potente Vergine, dolce sorridi,

A quei che soffrono ne la battaglia
E al petto stringono la tua medaglia.

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