The historical period which I have endeavoured to expound is certainly one of the most important in our annals. In the midst of a giddy, tumultuous variety of multiplied events, Italian civilisation was then rising towards its greatest height, to begin, at the end of this same period, its rapid descent. To make clear, by a simple narrative, the intrinsic unity of this infinite variety of events, the causes of growth, and the more or less remote causes of decay, is certainly neither a useless nor an easy undertaking. The past serves to make us know the present better. We expect of our history that it should elucidate and define for us the life and the formation of the spirit of our national character. All this is not to be obtained from documents alone; nor by philosophical dissertations alone could we succeed in making it clearly understood by the country for whose political and social education it is a necessity. Only too often does it happen, exactly on account of the intimate relation between past and present, that, instead of seeking the objective, impartial explanation of facts, we carry into the past the ideas of the present, and thus produce a confusion which prevents us from well understanding either the one or the other. And this is what, by reason of our political passions, very often happens in the compilation of Italian history, and it is from this error that we must most particularly guard ourselves if we wish to achieve a sure knowledge of the truth: of what we really were and of what we are...
