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Show Miscellany The Trentino. The people who inhabit the Trentino, as the southern portion of the Austrian province of Tyro! Is called, differ very much from their neighbors in the rest of t lie province. The Tyroleans proper speak German, for the most part, and are specially remarkable for their fervent loyalty to liie house of Hnpsburgr. The people of the Trentino speak luilian. All of their sympathies are with Italy, and, ever sinr-e the final settlemppt which followed fol-lowed Italy's wars nf liberation, a settlement settle-ment which ex'-hidod thp Trentino from the new kiimdom of uni ted Italy, they have rta ruVri their land as a part of Italy i in redeemed, and have waited and worked frr reunion. The dual race problem in Tyrol is. indeed, in-deed, a very aneient one. Hy far the greater part of the country was inhabited, inhab-ited, when it first made its appearance in history, by tho Rhaetions. held hy some to have been a Celtic race. They were conquered by the Romans under Drusus and Tiberius, in the second century cen-tury B. C and the land was later organized or-ganized into the Roman province of Hhaetia. Then, in the fifth century, after the fall of the Roman empire in the west, the northern part of the countrv was overrun by the Ostrogoths, but the Teutonic Langobardi, who pressed up from Venetia and the plains of Lom-bardy. Lom-bardy. became Romanized themselves, and the dual race question was firmly established. The next important epoch in the history his-tory of the Trentino was in the tenth century, when the emperor, Conrad II. Intrusted all temporal power in the district dis-trict to the bishops of Trent, at the same time detaching the -country from Italy, to which ft had practically always al-ways belonged. These bishops, in their turn, exercised their temporal power through lay vassals, and so, by devious ways, Tyrol passed, in the thirteenth century, to the house of Hapsburg-, and has remained a possession of that house ever since. From that time onward, till 16fi.i. the governing of Tyrol was benerally intrusted to a cadet of the Austrian house, who ruled first at Me-ran, Me-ran, and. from 140. at Innsbruck, ae a nearly Independent prince, but since 1665 t he province has been governed from Vienna. The center of gravity of the Trentino is, of course, its capital, the ancient city of Trent, a city which lives, as one writer has remarked, "rather on its historical his-torical souvenirs than on its industries." However that may be, it has certainly a well-deserved reputation for beauty. It stands on the left bank of the Adige, where that river, on its way to Verona, Is joined by the Fersina, arid, when approached ap-proached from the north, its embattled towers and walls, "filling the whole breadth of the valley," and the isolated rocky citadel of Doss Trento rising some 300 feet above the city, all go to make up a memorable picture. Trent, moreover, more-over, is not, like so many cities well favored at a distance, a disappointment on closer acquain tance. It is. indeed, beautiful within and without, an Italian town, and that of a high order. It has many palaces, substantial houses, broad streets, and spacious squares, and everywhere every-where Mine goes one sees Italian names, hears the Italian language, and in many other ways is made to' realize that one is at the center of Italia Irredenta. The inhabitants, indeed, never let an opportunity oppor-tunity go by of emphasizing their indissoluble in-dissoluble connection- with Italy. Christian Chris-tian Science Monitor. |
