rights and tradition to the Italy of to-day; the part of Savoy was the ultimate fulfilment of Machiavelli's prophecy. There is a noble canzone by Marino, composed in the early years of the seventeenth century, in which Italy appeals to Venice, urging an alliance between the Lady of the Sea and the Unicorn of the Alps, for the deliverance of the nation from the power of Spain (2). Traiano Boccalini, writing in the shelter of "la serenissima libertà veneziana," prophesies that the universal monarchy, which Spain is vainly seeking, will return again "alla nobilissima nazione italiana," and styles the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emanuel I., "il primo guerriero italiano." This phase of Italian political thought, looking to the House of Savoy for deliverance though hardly yet for unification, is represented in the famous poem addressed to Charles Emanuel by Fulvio Testi in 1614:—
"Carlo, quel generoso invitto core,
da cui spera soccorso Italia oppressa,
a che bada? a che tarda? a che piú cessa?
nostre perdite son le tue dimore.
*****
"Chi fia, se tu non se', che rompa il laccio
onde tant' anni avvinta Esperia giace?
posta ne la tua spada è la sua pace,
e la sua libertà sta nel tuo braccio." (3)
More than a century later, in 1739 (by which time the Dukes of Savoy had attained the title of Kings of Sardinia), we find a southern Italian, Pietro Giannone, writing that the "antico valor d'Italia" is preserved alone in the Italian peoples
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