Some men become legendary during their own lives. Their personalities have a certain detachment from the rest of the world so that common standards have no value as applied to them. They are poets or seers or philosophers, and often their mystic quality is of little use to the great mass of men, and is only to be appreciated by the few. Sometimes the whole world understands them. Mazzini had become a legend to the people of Europe long before his death, but a legend that carried the strongest personal appeal to every republican heart. You have only to dip into letters of the time to realize how close he came to millions of thinkers throughout Europe.

It would be interesting to consider the force of popular legend in a national movement, to weigh sentiment against statesmanship and military prowess. The land of Dante and of Savonarola would be an especially fertile field for such inquiry, among no people has the prophet been held of higher value than with the Italians. To-day we find them turning to their dramatists and novelists for help in the solution of new social problems just as Mazzini and the youth of his day looked to Alfieri for political guidance. There is no doubt that Mazzini believed it was his destiny to be a poet, and that throughout his whole life he looked forward to the day when Italy should be united and free, and he could turn to the work of writing her dramas.

Literary feuds play so little part in Anglo-Saxon history that we find it difficult to understand the importance of their place in Latin countries. Italy a century ago was the battle-ground of the Romanticists and Classicists. The Classicists believed in a certain smug cloistered virtue, a policy of non-resistance, and the contemplation of past glories. It was the ambition of the Romanticists “to give Italians an original national literature, not one that is as a sound of passing music to tickle the ear and die, but one that will interpret to them their aspirations, their ideas, their needs, their social movement.” Alfieri had been preaching resistance to Austrian tyranny through his dramas, the boy Mazzini first looked to him as a political saviour of Italy. He wrote, “these literary disputes are bound up with all that is important in social and civil life,” and again “the legislation and literature of a people always advance on parallel lines.” “Young Italy” first hoped to win freedom through its literature.

The ill-fated Carbonari rebellion of 1821 sent many Piedmontese patriots flying through Genoa to Spain. Giuseppe Mazzini, then sixteen years of age, walking from church one Sunday morning in Genoa in company with his mother, was stopped by a tall, gaunt-featured, black-eyed man who held out his hat asking alms for “the refugees of Italy.” The scene made a tremendous impression on the youth’s mind, for the first time he felt that the cause of freedom was not a scholastic subject, but one demanding the height of sacrifice. He set himself to study the causes of the failure of past uprisings, and at the same time dedicated himself to the work of teaching his countrymen how they might succeed.

The French Revolution had failed because it had taught men only a knowledge of their rights, without any conception of their duties. Men had not learned the law of self-restraint, and their ideal was the greatest personal liberty rather than the greatest personal obligation to their fellow-men. The revolutionists of Europe had a philosophy, but no religion. The first great discovery that Mazzini made was that if Italy were ever to be united, his countrymen must be fired with faith in their own God-given destinies. They must make of their cause a religion, they must learn, in his words, that Italy “had a strength within her, that was arbiter of facts, mightier than destiny itself.” At the start he offered his countrymen two arguments for action, the one that this land of theirs had twice ruled the world, that she who had given Christianity and the Renaissance to Europe had yet to send forth “the gospel of humanity.” He wrote: “Italy has been called a graveyard; but a graveyard peopled by our mighty dead is nearer life than a land that teems with living weaklings and braggarts;” he showed Italians “the vision of their country, radiant, purified by suffering, moving as an angel of light among the nations that thought her dead.” Such words rang like an inspiration, but Mazzini, studying the men with whom he had to work, knew that such inspiration was not enough. They struck the note of glory, but all revolutionists had heard that note; what was needed was the call to self-sacrifice.

With this fundamental need firmly fixed in his mind Mazzini gave what spare hours fell to the lot of a young Italian lawyer to the work of writing to the independent journals. At first he leaned to the side of caution, realizing how strict was the censorship of the Italian press, but gradually he contrived to slip bolder and more inflammatory messages into circulation under the censor’s nose. He spoke of a new party that should arise in a short time, and called it “Young Italy,” he expressed deep sympathy with political exiles, he turned his literary criticisms into studies of national development. Ultimately one of the papers for which he wrote, the “Indicatore Livornese,” became too daring, and was ended by the authorities. Mazzini then aimed higher, and gained credit with the “Antologia,” the Edinburgh Review of Italy, by a series of articles on the historical drama.

Meanwhile he was still studying the problem of giving a new religion to the youth of Italy. He had joined the Society of the Carbonari, and was learning that the plots and counter-plots of an unwieldy secret society would accomplish no good end. There was too much ritual, too little effort. The Carbonari had no definite plan, they were entirely at the mercy of any chance leader of disaffection, each member only knew one or two other members. Of a sudden the Revolution of July in France fired liberals throughout Europe, Mazzini and his young friends in Genoa immediately began active preparations for a military uprising. Lead was being cast into bullets when the police of Genoa intervened and Mazzini was placed under arrest. He had been suspected of revolutionary sentiments for some time. The Governor of Genoa told Giuseppe’s father that he considered the son “was gifted with some talent, and too fond of walking by himself at night absorbed in thought. What on earth has he at his age to think about? We don’t like young people thinking without our knowing the subject of their thoughts.”

Mazzini was taken to the fortress of Savona, and there imprisoned to await his trial. The commander of the fortress allowed the young prisoner to keep his Bible, Tacitus, and Byron. From these hours of solitary confinement sprang the youth’s passionate regard for the English poet, a man whose writings he later vehemently held were only to be classed with Dante as an inspiration to Italians.

The government could prove nothing definite against him, but he was thought too dangerous a man to be at large, and so was finally given his choice between nominal imprisonment in a small town and exile. France was throbbing with a new democracy, Paris was the center of revolutionary propaganda, and so Mazzini chose exile there. Early in 1831 he parted from his family at Savona and started north. He felt that he had come to the parting of the ways, and that henceforth his life was to be absolutely given to the cause. For the first time he saw the Alps, and his nature, always strongly susceptible to heroic scenery, was deeply stirred. He watched the sunrise from Mont Cenis and wrote, “The first ray of light trembling on the horizon, vague and pale, like a timid, uncertain hope, then the long line of fire cutting the blue heaven, firm and decided as a promise;” here was the poet soul free at last to speak its message.

With the date of this first exile begins Mazzini’s call to “Young Italy.” He had recognized that his countrymen must waken to a new religion, that their souls must be touched rather than their ambitions. The youth of Italy would feel the call more strongly than the middle-aged. “Place,” he said, “the young at the head of the insurgent masses; you do not know what strength is latent in those young bands, what magic influence the voice of the young has on the crowd; you will find in them a host of apostles for the new religion. But youth lives on movement, grows great in enthusiasm and faith. Consecrate them with a lofty mission, inflame them with emulation and praise; spread through their ranks the word of fire, the word of inspiration; speak to them of country, of glory, of power, of great memories.” “All great national movements,” he wrote later, “begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties.” Mazzini was not diffident with regard to his own youthful powers, nor was Cavour, five years Mazzini’s junior, who wrote to a friend at this time prophesying that he would one morning wake up Prime Minister of Italy.

The most important feature of “Young Italy” was its religion, the Carbonari had had none. Men were now told that they had a mission given them by God, and that what had been before a mere personal right had become a sacred duty. The second feature was the liberation of the poor, a need which all former revolutionists had seemed to overlook. The French Revolution had had no such substructure, the poets and dramatists had idealized national rather than social liberty, but Mazzini saw that the time had come for a further step, that Austria was not the only enemy his people had to fear. He wrote, “I see the people pass before my eyes in the livery of wretchedness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insultingly to it, or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication of a brutish, angry, savage joy; and I remember that these brutalized faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark of the same mission as my own. I lift myself to the vision of the future and behold the people rising in its majesty, brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and might; the people of the future, unspoilt by luxury, ungoaded by wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and duties, and in the presence of that vision my heart beats with anguish for the present and glorying for the future.” Mazzini gave “Young Italy” as its watchword “God and the People.”

There can be no question but that “Young Italy” was strong where the Carbonari had been weak, but both movements had of necessity many of the same defects. Government espionage forced the new movement like its predecessors to choose the devious courses of a secret society. The restlessness of the age caused the new movement to take each fitful start as a momentous signal. The strength of Austria was not underestimated, but the weakness of the disunited Italian states was. Diplomacy was disregarded; it was only many years later that Mazzini the prophet learned the value of Cavour the statesman. “Young Italy” was launched in a troublous sea, destined to encounter many storms, but fated ultimately to spread abroad the seeds of the hope that was to awaken republicans throughout all European countries.

Mazzini no sooner arrived in Lyons than he found himself in the center of plots. The French government, still fresh from the days of July, was in two minds; first they aided a band of Italian refugees who were planning a raid into Savoy, then they faced about and scattered the conspirators. Another plan was for a trip to Corsica, there to gather arms to aid the insurgents in Romagna, but the funds for this attempt were lacking. Mazzini gave up immediate action for the moment, and locating at Marseilles started with a few youthful friends to organize his great concerted movement. They had nothing but youth and audacity. A contemporary (probably Enrico Mayer) described Mazzini at this time as “about 5 feet 8 inches high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large ‘republican’ hat; his long, curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiseled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful mustachios and beard. Altogether he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal.”

Mazzini was proud of these early days when he looked back upon them later. He wrote, “We had no office, no helpers. All day, and a great part of the night, we were buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting information from travelers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and manual work. La Cecilia was compositor; Lamberti corrected the proofs; another of us made himself literally porter, to save the expense of distributing papers. We lived as equals and brothers; we had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity and unflagging industry; we were often in real want, but we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we believed in the future.” It was Mazzini’s period of boundless hope.

Much of this hope throbbed through the literature that the small Marseilles press scattered throughout Europe, men were in such a state of unrest that the burning words became to them a prophetic writing on the wall. In a hundred ways the contraband pamphlets were smuggled across frontiers, all classes sent assurances of support and aid to the young men in Marseilles, everywhere lodges of “Young Italy” were started, and local editors scattered Mazzini’s doctrines through their immediate territories. Priests, attracted by the strong religious tenor, professional and business men, many of the nobility even joined the new movement. Garibaldi, a young officer in the Genoese merchant service, Gioberti, then a teacher at Vercelli, Ruffini, and his fellow-conspirators working under the very shadow of destruction at Genoa, enrolled under the new standard of “God and the People.” The old members of the Carbonari, the followers of Buonarotti and his “veri Italiani” joined the ranks, within two years “Young Italy” counted its members by the tens of thousands. Not since the era of the great Crusades had there been any simultaneous rising to compare with it.

All men who hoped for the coming of a united Italy looked towards Piedmont as the state by which the first step must be taken. Piedmont had great military traditions. It supported an efficient army, it was so situated that it held the key of entrance into Lombardy, and had the Alps and the Apennines as a base of retreat. In Piedmont there was moreover an intense national feeling, the House of Savoy was deeply rooted in the affections of the people, and almost alone among the Italian sovereignties that House was practically indigenous to the soil. In Charles Albert Piedmont had just received a king who was an intense nationalist, to whom the name of “Italia” was sacred, and who, at certain times, seems to have felt that he was destined to drive the foreigner beyond the Alps. He was no liberal, both his nature and his priestly advisers counseled him against revolutionary measures, he had not the sanguine temper of the leader, he was more the theorist than the actor. Yet with all his temperamental defects the men of the new generation looked on him as a possible saviour, he had given countenance to the Carbonari in his youth, and had led the conspirators of 1821 to believe that he would side with them in any war for Lombard independence. He had not given such aid as they expected, but he was still the one sovereign to whom “Young Italy” could look with any measure of hope. Mazzini was never an ardent believer in monarchies, but now, when his new party was growing with tremendous leaps and bounds, he felt that even the leadership of a king was better than no leadership at all. He was ready at this time to sacrifice republicanism for nationalism; how far he would then have followed a monarchy, if successful, is a difficult question to decide. He was so much in earnest that he could not always critically balance the means and the end.

Early in 1831 Mazzini published his famous letter to Charles Albert. It was the cry of a prophet to a later generation. He pointed out that the King of Piedmont needed no aid from Austria or France. “There is a crown more brilliant and sublime than that of Piedmont, a crown that waits the man who dares to think of it, who dedicates his life to winning it, and scorns to dull the splendor with thoughts of petty tyranny. Sire, have you ever cast an eagle glance upon this Italy, so fair with nature’s smile, crowned by twenty centuries of noble memory, the land of genius, strong in the infinite resources that only want a common purpose, girt round with barriers so impregnable, that it needs but a firm will and a few brave breasts to shelter it from foreign insult? Place yourself at the head of the nation, write on your flag, ‘Union, Liberty, Independence.’ Free Italy from the barbarian, build up the future, be the Napoleon of Italian freedom. Do this and we will gather round you, we will give our lives for you, we will bring the little states of Italy under your flag. Your safety lies on the sword’s point, draw it and throw away the scabbard. But remember, if you do it not, others will do it without you and against you.”

Charles Albert had moments of heroism, but they were only too often followed by moments of overwhelming caution. If he ever read Mazzini’s letter he must have thrilled at the call to save a country he loved with the whole ardor of his nature. After that first thrill had passed he must have realized that the time to take such a supreme step had not come, or that he had not the will to lead it. Once harboring such a doubt the King became a battle-ground for advisers, and when the short fight for control of the King’s mind was won, the reactionaries proved themselves the victors. The unfortunate King allowed others to act against his better judgment; when the fire of revolt next blazed up in Piedmont the government turned a savage face towards the conspirators. The little band of revolutionists was hounded without mercy, terror reigned in Genoa, and the only choice offered the rebels was between betrayal of their friends and execution. Jacopo Ruffini, one of Mazzini’s dearest boyhood friends, killed himself in prison when offered such an alternative. The pendulum swung back, gaining momentum thereby for its coming flight. “Ideas,” wrote Mazzini, “ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.”

At twenty-eight Mazzini found himself an outcast, hunted at last from France as he had been before from Italy, living in the closest concealment in Switzerland, all his hopes tumbling about him. He tried to organize a band of raiders who should enter Savoy from the Swiss frontier; they were disrupted by treachery and distrust before the first shot was fired. Mazzini’s health broke under the endless strain, there were nights when he never went to bed, days when he had to lie concealed in a goatherd’s hut. At times he seemed to find his only consolation in the white-capped mountains, them he passionately worshiped, the Alps were always nearest to him after Italy. He had very few friends, almost no books; there were no presses now to speak his words to the young hearts of Europe, only occasionally word came to him that his great idea was growing in the outer world.

In those dark days in Switzerland Mazzini suffered most from the thought that he had entailed all his family and friends in his vain sacrifice. His boyhood confidants were dead or in exile, families he loved were scattered over many countries, the few women he knew well were left solitary in their homes. The woman he loved he felt he could not ask to marry him, he had no home to give her, and scarcely knew whether his next day’s food would be forthcoming. He wrote to a friend, “I wanted to do good, but I have always done harm to everybody, and the thought grows and grows until I think I shall go mad. Sometimes I fancy I am hated by those I love most.” In all his letters of this period we catch the note of a spirit torn between pity for sufferings he thinks himself to have caused, and the stern sense of a duty given him by God. They are wonderful letters, the thoughts of a man who could put no limits to his own self-sacrifice nor value too highly the sacrifices of others. In one letter he wrote: “I think over it from morning to night, and ask pardon of my God for having been a conspirator; not that I in the least repent the reasons for it, or recant a single one of my beliefs, which were and are and will be a religion to me, but because I ought to have seen that there are times when a believer should only sacrifice himself to his belief. I have sacrificed everybody.”

A great heroic spirit was trying to justify, not its own aims, but the sorrows it had brought upon others. Mazzini could never have seemed hard and cold, but in those dark days in Switzerland, and in those later to come in London, the gentle, humble spirit of him was pre-eminent. He loved friendship, home life, the arts; he had met his ideal woman; and yet each and every joy life had to offer him he gave up on the altar of his duty. “Duty,” he said, “an arid, bare religion, which does not save my heart a single atom of unhappiness, but still the only one that can save me from suicide;” and again he wrote, “When a man has once said to himself in all seriousness of thought and feeling, I believe in liberty and country and humanity, he is bound to fight for liberty and country and humanity—fight while life lasts, fight always, fight with every weapon, face all from death to ridicule, face hatred and contempt, work on because it is his duty, and for no other reason.”

In 1837 Mazzini gave up the heights of Switzerland for the fogs of London, moved largely to this change by the fact that in England he need no longer live in hiding. He did not look forward with any eagerness to life in England; if the English cared little what political beliefs refugees brought with them, they were not the people to flame with interest in a cause. Byron, Mazzini considered more Italian than English; he could not conceive of poetry as stirring the British blood. He took cheap lodgings, and set himself to writing for support, finding time to keep up his correspondence with members of “Young Italy” scattered over Europe, and also time to look after such Italians in London as were in greater straits than he. The Ruffini family were with him for a time, then misunderstandings separated them, and the last tie that bound him to Genoa was gone. He lived the pathetic life of a literary hack, spending his days working in the British Museum, and his nights writing in his own small room. The one charm he found about London was its fog. “The whole city,” he wrote, “seems under a kind of spell, and reminds me of the witches’ scene in Macbeth or the Brocksberg or the Witch of Endor. The passers-by look like ghosts—one feels almost a ghost oneself.”

The lack of money oppressed him sorely; he would give to every Italian who begged of him on the score of universal brotherhood, gradually his few possessions went their way to the pawnshop. He said that he needed only a place to write and a few pennies to buy cigars. Then by one of those curious chances of fate he met the Carlyles, and his life became a little less cramped and lonely, although perhaps more tempestuous. There are a score of accounts of evenings Mazzini spent with these new friends, the one of whom he admired as a great thinker, the other as a truly noble woman. In time Carlyle tried the gentle Italian sorely; the story goes that the philosopher would rage at all human institutions with the violence of a hurricane and then turn to his guest with the words, “You have not succeeded yet because you have talked too much.” We can picture the boisterous, stormy Englishman thundering at those ideals which the sensitive, passionate Italian was trying to defend. It speaks well for Mazzini that he said of Carlyle, “He is good, good, good; and still, I think in spite of his great reputation, unhappy.” Carlyle’s estimate of Mazzini was that he was “by nature a little lyrical poet.” This opposition of ideas did not, however, keep him from defending his Italian friend when others attacked him. The London Times saw fit to speak slightingly of Mazzini, and Carlyle wrote the editors in noble indignation. “Whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs,” he said, “I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind, one of those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.” These were glowing words, and thrilled Mazzini as he read them. They were a tribute to Carlyle’s justice, but it is doubtful if he ever really understood the Italian. He would have found it difficult to discover a prophet living in lodgings so near to his own house.

Gradually Mazzini made other English friends, and he worked his way into the pages of the best reviews. In time also his political efforts were revived; he never let any temporary interest dim his goal. He started a society of Italian workmen in London, and edited a paper for them, and opened an evening school where poor Italian boys were taught to read and write and learn something of Italian history. This school was very near his heart, he was always devoted to children.

During Mazzini’s exiled years in London, “Young Italy” had spread over Europe, and through countless secret channels was gradually making its strength felt. Outside circumstances were needed to bring its forces to a head, but there was no doubt that Mazzini’s words had called a power into being that must in time inevitably come to a life and death struggle with the Austrians. It is difficult to point out the exact minor causes of each fluctuation in Italian opinion, it is certain that the new popular literature called readers to take account of the words of Dante, and that the more they read the great poet the more they longed for liberty from the foreigner. Charles Albert, it was felt, was again dreaming of heroic measures, and something of the old, almost legendary faith in the house of Savoy as a national deliverer, re-awakened. Manzoni and Gioberti were prophesying a great Catholic revival, and the election of Pius the Ninth seemed for the moment to justify the hope. The half-pitiful words of Pius, “They want to make a Napoleon of me who am only a poor country parson,” was a more correct estimate of the Pontiff than the glowing words of his contemporaries; he was no more in accord with the spirit of his time than was Metternich. Still his election marked the swing of the pendulum in the liberal direction, and “Young Italy” was quick to take notice of such a fact.

The year 1848 was remarkable for concerted social movements throughout Europe. In France the Second Republic overthrew the monarchy, and throughout the Italian states an electric current shocked the people into revolution. Leghorn revolted and made Guerrazzi its chief, Milan fell easy victim to the Tobacco rioters, Sicily sent its Bourbon king flying, and Naples wrested a popular constitution from the greedy hand of Ferdinand. Piedmont and Tuscany followed soon, demanded and obtained constitutions, and the Pope, alarmed at the sudden spread of liberalism, granted a constitution to Rome. The moment seemed ripe to throw off the Austrian overlords.

There are few more tangled histories than the record of the next few months in Italy. It is a drama filled with heroic figures, but one through which runs the current of continual misunderstandings. Was Italy to be a kingdom or a republic? Was the Pope a menace or a help? Was French aid to be courted or rejected? These were only a few of the questions on which men split. The one glorious fact was the burning patriotic ardor of Italians in each state from Sicily to Savoy, their actual belief in the religion of duty Mazzini had been preaching to them.

Word came to Milan that there was revolution in Vienna, and the Five Days drove the Austrian garrison from their stronghold. Como, Brescia, Venice, all the northern cities that had so long loathed the white-coated overlords, won freedom; Metternich’s puppet-princes of Modena and Parma fled. Piedmont declared war, Tuscany declared war, volunteers of all ranks and ages poured from Umbria to help the northern armies. Mazzini, hearing the news in London, sped to Milan, and was received as the prophet of the new day. Italy had its prophet, but the statesman and the soldier were not yet recognized.

The new provisional government in Milan had no fixed policy, Charles Albert’s advisers still clogged his steps, the volunteers were ready, but they had neither the arms nor the training to compete with the war-worn Austrians. While there was discussion and dissension in Lombardy, the enemy recuperated and returned to besiege the cities they had lost. By July the Italian army was driven into Milan, there the spirit of the earlier Five Days revived, but victory appeared hopeless, and finally Charles Albert, torn and distracted, surrendered the city. Mazzini passed to Lugano, thence to Leghorn, thence to Florence; in each city the situation was practically the same, the people were aflame with devotion to Italy, the leaders had as many plans as there were men.

Rome had driven out the Pope and proclaimed the Republic. The call of Rome was the call direct to Mazzini’s soul, he turned there to find a solution of all difficulties. Simultaneously the newly formed Roman Assembly turned to him, and bade him welcome as a citizen of Rome. He believed that Dante’s vision and his own were coming true, and hurried to the Eternal City. His first work there was to raise ten thousand troops and send them north. They had scarcely started when the crushing news of the defeat at Novara stunned all patriots. Rome had to look to herself, and made Mazzini Triumvir and practically dictator of the city.

The little Roman Republic of 1849 had an inspiring history. Mazzini had written and spoken, now it became his turn to act. He was set at the head of a city from which its spiritual as well as its temporal head had fled. Priests and protesting laymen were all about him, it would have been easy for him to scorn the power that scoffed at him. He did not, he himself doubted the strength of the Catholic Church to survive, he dreamed of a new church which should speak to the world from the seven hills of Rome, but he would not take a single step to destroy one man’s religion. More than that he made it his special duty to see that the priests were not disturbed in their work. He wanted the Republic to be based on the love of God. He hoped that the Church would aid the Italian cause for the love of man. He would allow the Pope to reign as spiritual Prince, if he would only be content with his own noble sphere.

Rome won back something of its historic ardor under Mazzini’s call. The Republic was planned on lines of great proportions, steps were actually taken to make it a republic wherein each man had a worthy share. The foundations were laid with the greatest patience and zeal, the Triumvir gave the last ounce of his strength to building truly, he lived as he had always lived, for others, and took nothing for himself. Margaret Fuller said that at this time his face, haggard and worn, seemed to her “more divine than ever.” The poorest citizen could find him as readily as the richest, he was the same to all, he gave away his small salary of office as entirely as in his London days he had dispersed his earnings. If ever man’s rule was noble, if ever it was spiritual, that of Rome’s Triumvir was, in the weeks when he faced treachery both from without and within.

It is scarcely possible that Mazzini could have expected his city to stand against the armies that were marching towards it. At most he could only hope to show the Romans of what great self-sacrifice they were capable. He probably hoped that the Republic would convince Italians that the spirit of “Young Italy” was not a mere prophet’s dream. That he did; he could not fight Austria and France single-handed.

Louis Napoleon had evolved one of his great ideas, he would win both the French army and the French clergy by a strategic move. He sent Oudinot into Italy, blinding the Romans with various subtleties, waiting until the propitious hour to strike. The Romans understood, the Assembly voted to resist to the end, and Garibaldi led the troops to their first victory. De Lesseps was appointed peace negotiator for the French, and he and Mazzini met, and for a time it seemed as though there might be a reconciliation. Mazzini strove with the greatest tact and patience to win the French, but De Lesseps was nothing more than Napoleon’s dupe, and as soon as Garibaldi had advanced to meet the Neapolitan king’s army, Napoleon removed his envoy and showed his hand.

The truce had been virtually agreed on when Oudinot suddenly attacked and placed Rome in a state of siege. For almost a month the citizens fought with unfailing courage. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Mameli, the martyr war-poet, Bassi, the great preacher, republicans and royalists, princes and peasants, all within Rome’s walls fought for freedom from the foreigner. There could be but one end, and it came when starvation and losses had weakened the defenders so that they could no longer hold their posts. Mazzini would have fought hand-to-hand in the streets, the army was with him, but the Assembly voted to surrender. The besiegers entered, Garibaldi led his Three Thousand in their great retreat, Mazzini stayed on in Rome uttering such protest as he could, unharmed by the French troops who dared not touch him, through knowledge of the people’s love for him.

The downfall of the Republic must have been a terrible blow to Mazzini, probable as it is that he foresaw the city could not long last by itself. Physical force and treachery had overwhelmed the noblest concepts of government. Temporary disappointment, however, could not dull his spirit, the prophet of United Italy proved himself a true prophet. He went on with his work, at first in Switzerland, then again driven away by foreign influence, in London.

He took up his life there, much older, much more worn and scarred, but with the same indomitable spirit. “His face in repose,” wrote a contemporary of this time, “was grave, even sad, but it lit up with a smile of wonderful sweetness as he greeted a friend with a pressure rather than a shake of the thin hand,” and again his piercing black eyes were described as “of luminous depth, full of sadness, tenderness and courage, of purity and fire, readily flashing into indignation or humor, always with the latent expression of exhaustless resolution.” His pictures are familiar, the high straight forehead, the strong nose, the curving lips, the scant gray, then almost white, mustache and beard, the high-buttoned frock coat and the silk handkerchief wound like a stock about his throat.

London had grown kinder to him than at first, he had many good friends, and he could understand better the English point of view. He lodged as humbly as before, and again took up his writing, his correspondence, and his ceaseless care for his poor countrymen. One of his best biographers gives us this sketch of him, a picture that portrays the man, “in his small room, every piece of furniture littered with books and papers, the air thick with smoke of cheap Swiss cigars (except when friends sent Havanas), brightened only by his tame canaries and carefully-tended plants, he was generally writing at his desk until evening, always with more work in hand than he could cope with, carrying on the usual mass of correspondence, writing articles for his Italian papers, raising public funds with infinite labor, stirring his English friends to help the cause, finding money and work for the poor refugees, or organizing concerts in their interest.” With what infinite reverence must the men he helped have looked on him!

The prophet is not a statesman; he can show the road, but rarely follow it. Mazzini’s life had reached its climax when as Triumvir he had started to practise his own precepts, his work had been to scatter seed for the crop which other men should reap at harvest. He could not understand the dissimulations of diplomacy, he could not tolerate compromise, he could not now sacrifice his dreams of a republic for liberty and union. These qualities were not in his character; if they had been he could not have led men’s minds by his words and actions; he could not be both a prophet and an opportunist; the need of the former was passing, and that of the latter at hand.

Few men understood the twists and turns of Cavour’s policy as Prime Minister of Piedmont, and Mazzini not at all. After the battle of Novara Charles Albert had abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel, and a new order had come to pass in Piedmont. Cavour had a definite goal, the unity of Italy under the leadership of his king; and he never forgot that goal. To win it, he realized that he needed more than the raw volunteer forces of 1848, more than mere enthusiasm, no matter how heroic; he needed efficient troops, he needed a foreign ally, he needed a moment when Austria should be at a disadvantage, above all he needed one leader instead of a dozen to determine on any action. To accomplish these ends he gave republicans little sympathy, and centered the national movement about his king, he treated with Louis Napoleon, and did his utmost to win his favor, he discountenanced secret half-prepared revolts against the Austrians, he drilled and multiplied the troops, and harbored the finances. At all these measures Mazzini instinctively revolted; he wanted a republic, he loathed Napoleon as the betrayer of Rome, he was ever eager for any sincere demonstration against Austria. He only learned half-truths in London, but those half-truths did not inspire him to trust Cavour. Neither of these men understood the other; to Cavour Mazzini was the fanatic who would destroy any cause by lack of temperance, to Mazzini Cavour was the aristocrat who would inflict upon the poor of Italy simply a new yoke in place of the old. They could not work together, and so Mazzini publicly denounced Cavour, and the latter declared Mazzini an exile from his home.

Meantime, while Piedmont was playing a wary game, and all the Italian states were making ready for the next great attempt, Mazzini took part in two small insurrections, one near Como, and the other at Genoa, both of which failed disastrously. The latter was the more serious, the government was tired of these perennial conspiracies, and denounced the revolt as anarchistic. Mazzini and five other leaders were sentenced to death, and many to long terms of imprisonment. Mazzini hid in the house of the Marquis Pareto, and was undiscovered, although the police made a prolonged search for him. It is said that Mazzini himself, dressed as a footman, opened the door to the officer, who recognized him as an old schoolmate, and had mercy. Some days later he escaped from the house, undisguised, walking arm-in-arm with a lady of Genoa, and reaching a carriage, was driven to Quarto, and thence went to England. There were many curious turns and twists in this conspiracy in which both conspirators and government were working for the same great end, but with widely different means, and with avowed enmity between them.

It was not long until Cavour and Napoleon met at PlombiÈres and made their famous compact, after that events hastened forward. By the spring of 1859 Cavour had prepared both royalists and republicans for war. With his ally he felt that the Italian cause must now triumph, and at a given signal the conflict began. The Princes were driven from Tuscany, Romagna, Parma, and Modena, and all those states declared for Victor Emmanuel. Much as Mazzini hated Cavour’s French ally, he could no longer stay his enthusiasm. He saw unity at last almost come, after Solferino he declared that the Austrian domination was at an end. Without warning Napoleon met the Emperor Francis Joseph at Villafranca and betrayed the cause. He abandoned Venetia to Austria, and central Italy to the Bourbon Princes. Cavour, wild with indignation, spoke his feelings and resigned, the Italians were again left to their own divided efforts.

Mazzini, his fears of Napoleon now justified, went to Florence and declared that the people of central Italy must stake all for their briefly-won freedom, he gave up his republican protests, and advocated annexation with Piedmont so they might have unity. He wrote to friends in Sicily and Rome, he begged Garibaldi to lead his troops into Umbria. All this time he had to live virtually in hiding, the ban against him had not been raised, and the thought that he, whose every emotion was for Italy, should not be trusted at all among his countrymen galled him to the quick. He wrote: “To be a prisoner among our own people is too much to bear.”

Gradually the troubled situation cleared, Cavour returned to power, and by temporizing held both the French support and the enthusiasm of the native troops. Mazzini still advocated immediate warfare, Cavour waited, and in the end the latter’s policy was proved correct. In the interval the disheartened Mazzini had gone back to England, and again, on hearing that Garibaldi and his famous legion had started for Sicily, returned in haste to Genoa. There followed Garibaldi’s victories, then the Piedmontese declaration of war against the Pope, then only Rome and Venice were lacking to the cause. Mazzini went to Naples to be nearer the heart of the struggle; he urged the Neapolitans to demand a constitution, and they, filled with the one thought of unity, berated him as a republican. His friends urged him to leave the city. “Even against your wish,” said one of them, “you divide us.” He could not leave Italy at that hour of her fate, but he felt that he was cruelly misunderstood. He wrote, “I am worn out morally and physically; for myself the only really good thing would be to have unity achieved quickly through Garibaldi, and one year, before dying, of Walham Green or Eastbourne, long silences, a few affectionate words to smooth the ways, plenty of sea-gulls, and sad dozing.”

Some of those things he was to know, for during the next few years he lived again in England, writing and reading, and continually engaged in plans for the final capture of Venetia and Rome. Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi, and Mazzini were each devising means to gain this long-hoped-for end, but the position and peculiar characteristics of each made co-operation almost impossible. The wise Cavour had been succeeded by vacillating ministers who were a continual drag upon the King, Garibaldi would not consent to adopting any of Mazzini’s suggestions (the latter once said that “if Garibaldi has to choose between two proposals, he is sure to accept the one that isn’t mine”), and Mazzini found it ever difficult to sacrifice his republican ideals to the needs of the moment. Ultimately, however, the Italian troops, this time with the aid of Prussia, recommenced war with Austria to win Venetia, Istria, and the Tyrol. The spirit of 1866 was not the spirit of 1860, the mythical valor of the Garibaldian army seemed to have evaporated in the passes of the Tyrol. Prussia won, but Italy met defeat at Custozza. Again Napoleon took a hand in the country’s destiny. To the surprise of Europe, he intervened and stated that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to him, and that he would give it to Italy if the latter would come to an immediate agreement for peace. There seemed little else to be done, and Mazzini saw the campaign, that had begun in the highest hopes of complete national independence, end in the acceptance of the gift of a single province from the foreigner.

Thenceforth Mazzini’s work lost all accord with that of the monarchy. He had not lost his faith in the great destiny of Italy, but he despaired of seeing that destiny fulfilled as he might wish within his lifetime. Forty thousand persons signed the petition for his amnesty, he was elected again and again by Messina as its deputy, but the party of the Moderates would not have him in the Chamber. Continued opposition made his fame only the greater among the people, he assumed the proportions of a national myth, to many he had become an actual demi-god. Secretly he traveled about Italy, working, with an energy altogether disproportionate to his strength, in the cause of a republic. He had many followers in Genoa, and one of them has left a picture of Mazzini’s entrance to a meeting. “A low knock was heard at the door, and there he was in body and soul, the great magician, who struck the fancy of the people like a mythical hero. Our hearts leaped, and we went reverently to meet that great soul. He advanced with a child’s frank courtesy and a divine smile, shaking hands like an Englishman, and addressing each of us by name, as if our names were written on our foreheads. He was not disguised; he wore cloth shoes, and a capote, and with his middle, upright stature, he looked like a philosopher straight from his study, who never dreamed of troubling any police in the world.”

He found time to write his remarkable treatise on religion, “From the Council to God,” while he prepared plans for a new revolution. This time he intended to land in Sicily. The attempt was foolhardy, he was arrested at Palermo, and confined at Gaeta, where the Bourbons had not long before made their last stand. Almost forty years before, at the outset of his career, he had watched the Mediterranean from his prison at Savona, now he watched the same deep blue sea from Gaeta. He wrote here, “The nights are very beautiful; the stars shine with a luster one sees only in Italy. I love them like sisters, and link them to the future in a thousand ways. If I could choose I should like to live in almost absolute solitude, working at my historical book or at some other, just from a feeling of duty, and only wishing to see for a moment, now and then, some one I did not know, some poor woman that I could help, some workingmen I could advise, the doves of Zurich, and nothing else.”

Rome fell, and Mazzini’s captivity came to an end. He passed through the city where twenty-one years before he had been Triumvir, and, seeking to avoid all popular demonstrations, went to Genoa. There he fell ill, and his failing strength made successive attacks more and more frequent. He traveled a little more, and then in March, 1872, died at a friend’s house in Pisa. He had lived to see Italy united, but in a very different manner from that of which he had dreamed.

To the republicans of Europe, Mazzini’s voice was that of a great prophet for half the Nineteenth Century, to the Italians he was the voice of Italy itself. He was the precursor of unity, of independence, of courageous self-denial, without him Cavour might have planned in vain, and Garibaldi been no more than an inconspicuous lieutenant. He had the two greatest of gifts, an ideal and the faith that knows no defeat, yet he was not simply the idealist nor the devotee, for he could stir other men to action through his own belief. A friend, comparing him with Kossuth, said: “Now I write of him who seems to my judgment to be, like Saul, above all his fellows ... the one man needed excitement to stir his spirit ... the soul of the other was as an inner lamp shining through him always. The strength of Mazzini’s personal influence lay here. You could not doubt his glance.”

There was a certain kinship between Mazzini and Lincoln, simplicity and a boundless love of the weak and the oppressed was the keynote of both lives. Both were emancipators, but both were infinitely more, men whose whole lives bore eloquent testimony of their noble spirits. Lincoln loved men as Mazzini loved them, Mazzini and Lincoln both knew the suffering that comes from being continually misunderstood. When Lincoln was assassinated, the great Italian envied the man who had died knowing that his life’s cause had been accomplished.

Throughout one of the most tangled and turbulent epochs of history, Mazzini’s ideals never changed; the principles of “Young Italy” were the principles of his Triumvirate and of his prison life at Gaeta. He was for a United Italy and a republic. At times he could postpone the latter aim for the former, but never disregard it. And what he was for Italy, he was for the whole world. He insisted on the brotherhood of nations, on the paramount duty of all nations toward humanity. Whosoever, he believed, separates families from families, and nations from nations, divides what God meant to be indissoluble. He looked to Italy to show the other nations how to live in freedom and equality, and to Rome to pronounce a new and greater religion of majestic tolerance. Had Italy been freed early in his career, he must have become a great religious teacher; even as it was, his power was that of an apostle, and his appeal to the soul as well as to the mind. Men who knew him loved him as something finer than themselves, a man closer to God, one of His disciples.

His personal life was one long record of self-sacrifice, his home, his family, his love, his comfort, even the most meager necessities of life were given to the cause, nothing was too much for him to do, nothing too trivial for him to undertake, could he help his country or one of his countrymen an iota thereby. He could appreciate other men’s happiness and in a way share it with them; he knew little or nothing of envy, vanity, or malice; he would let any leader have the glory of helping Italy, so long as the result was gained. More than that, he could bear the continual undervaluation of the English among whom he lived, he could read what Carlyle wrote, “Of Italian democracies and Young Italy’s sorrows, of extraneous Austrian emperors in Milan, or poor old chimerical Popes in Bologna, I know nothing and desire to know nothing,” and yet continue Carlyle’s friend; he could bear the sting of having his name coupled with every attempt at assassination, when there were few things he abhorred more than secret violence. His idea of duty was so high, and had so absorbed all the petty spirits of his nature, that he could endure anything for that cause, and indeed embraced eagerly whatever came to him under that banner.

The great authority on heroes says of the hero as prophet: “The great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.” So the world had waited for Giuseppe Mazzini. Other men bore much and labored much for the sake of a united fatherland, but none other gave such lightning to their world. The prophet may not actually lay the stones of history, but he breathes the spirit of life into the builders. He is mankind’s greatest friend and hope, who points out the road human souls would take. Mazzini stands with Dante and Savonarola as the third great prophet of Italian history who spoke with a world voice.

CAVOUR