The poet Alfieri, that Tyrtaeus of Italian liberty, produced there his revolutionary dramas, and there sowed his maxims against the two-fold tyranny of popes and kings in every theatre in Italy.
Milan, beneath the Austrian flag, had within its walls a republic of poets and philosophers.

Beccaria wrote there more daringly than Montesquieu.

His work on "Crimes and Punishments" was a bill of accusation of all the laws of his native country.

_Parini Monte, Cesarotti, Pindemonte, Ugo Foscolo_ gay, serious, and heroic poets, then satirised the absurdities of their tyrants, the baseness of their fellow-countrymen, or sang, in patriotic odes, the virtues of their ancestors, and the approaching deliverance of their country.
Turin alone, attached to the house of Saxony, was silent, and proscribed Alfieri.
In England, the mind, a long time free, had produced sound morals.

The aristocracy felt itself sufficiently strong never to become persecuting.
Worship was there as independent as conscience.