Eustace, John Cretwode: A classical tour through Italy An. MDCCCII (Vol. 3): 3. ed., rev. and enl (London: J. Mawman, 1815)

Ch. XV. THROUGH ITALY. 503
lation, and big with the seeds of empire, magna
mater frugum, magna virtim, is now not nominally
but really and effectually at the disposal of France.
Often invaded, sometimes overrun, but never
before totally subdued and in entire subjection to
a foreign power, Italy must at length bend her
neck to the yoke, and submit like Greece to a
barbarian conqueror. Iler republics, that still
retained the name and breathed the spirit of an-
cient liberty, are no more; her cities, each the
capital of an independent state, are now reduced
to provincial towns ; her kingdoms, though still
flattered with the title, are sunk into tributary
dependencies: the monuments of her glory, and
the masterpieces of her arts, are all marked out
for plunder; and what she has still more reason
to deplore, the spirit which acquired that glory,
and inspired those arts, is fled perhaps for
ever.
Quod fugiens redituraque nunquam
Libertas . . . non respieit ultra
Ausoniam.
Luc. vii.
The village of Marengo is about two miles
from Alessandria. The Bormida in summer, a
shallow stream, spread over a wide channel in-
tersected with little islands and lined with wil-
lows, flows v. ithin half a mile of the latter. Ales-
sandria is merely a fortress, and remarkable only
for the sieges which it has sustained. It was