We think of them involuntarily as persons, and reserve for them epithets that mark the permanence of their distinctive characters.
To treat of them collectively is almost impossible.

Each has its own biography, and plays a part of consequence in the great drama of the nation.

Accordingly the study of Italian politics, Italian literature, Italian art, is really not the study of one national genius, but of a whole family of cognate geniuses, grouped together, conscious of affinity, obeying the same general conditions, but issuing in markedly divergent characteristics.

Democracies, oligarchies, aristocracies spring into being by laws of natural selection within the limits of a single province.

Every municipality has a separate nomenclature for its magistracies, a somewhat different method of distributing administrative functions.