  Some unpublished (in one case privately published) Letters and Papers, written by Mazzini.
I [This letter gives some details concerning his early life, which are not mentioned in his works or in any of the biographies.] Dear Sir,—I began to attract the attention of the Government in Italy by my literary writings. I had been pleading warmly the cause of what was then called Romanticism, and was the right of progressive life in Literature. Then, as now, all pleading for literary liberty, independence, progression, were suspected in Italy as educating the mind to forbidden tendencies. I published in 1828 a weekly literary paper the "Indicatore Genovese": it was, at the end of the year, and though published under the double ecclesiastical and temporal censorship, suppressed. I caused the paper to be continued at Leghorn under the title of "Indicatore Livornese";[47] it was, at the end of the year, suppressed again. I wrote one long article on "a European Literature" in the best of our reviews, the "Antologia" of Florence. The review was persecuted and after some time suppressed. In 1830, after the Revolution of July I was arrested. The accusation was the spreading of a secret association tending to the overthrow of the Italian Government. I recollect a fact, well apt to give a summary of our condition in Italy. My father, Professor of Anatomy in the Genoese University, went to the Governor of the town, Venanson, enquiring at the cause of my imprisonment. "Your son," he was told amongst other things, "is fond of walking every night, alone, sadly pensive, on the outskirts of the town. 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." A committee of Senators was appointed, in Turin, to try me. They found no proofs, and acquitted both me and some friends who had been arrested with me. Nevertheless I was sent, in solitary confinement, When the insurrection of 1831 was quenched in the Estates of the Pope, I established myself at Marseilles, and founded from there the new association "la giovine Italia." Of the distinctions to be made between this and the old Carbonari associations, I have spoken in four letters that have been printed in the "Monthly Chronicle." They—the fourth especially—I would advise you to peruse: I have not a single copy in my possession and cannot even remember the number; but they must have appeared between 1838 and 1839. The rapidity with which the Association spread evinced the justice of the fundamental views. At the beginning of 1832, the organisation was powerful throughout all Italy. As one of the main features of La Giovine Italia was to not content itself as Carbonarism did, with a secret war, but to reach insurrection through the open preaching of its belief, an organ was established at Marseilles expounding all the principles of the Association. La Giovine Italia, a review, or rather a collection of political pamphlets springing from the Association, was under my direction; and, in fact, the two-thirds of each volume were my own. The effect was really electric among our youth. From Marseilles, through the merchant-ships of our country, the captains of which were almost generally volunteering their efforts, the volumes were smuggled into Italy, where they raised the enthusiasm of the patriots to such a pitch that it was evident a general outbreak would ensue. Then, the persecutions began. Applications were made by all the Italian Governments to the French: the policy of Louis Philippe had already changed, and the most active co-operation against the Association and me was promised. Measures were taken at Marseilles against such of our exiles as were living upon the subsidies. They were sent away to the interior. But few as we were, we could, by multiplying our activity, front the task. At last, under the pretence of my being The "Giovine Italia" had six volumes published at different times. All that I have ever written concerning politics bears my name. Before I established the Association I wrote a long letter to Charles Albert, who had just then come to reign over Piedmont, remembering him of what he had promised and done, when not a king, pointing to him all the dangers of his position, the impossibility of keeping down long the spirit of the nation, the system of blood-shedding reaction to which he would soon be bound, and on the other side, the Possible, the Beautiful, the Grand, the Godlike that there would be in his putting himself at the head of the National party; the letter was printed, and signed only "An Italian." My name was then quite unknown, and would not have added the least weight to the considerations; besides, I did not believe that the "Italian People" would ever spring from under a royal cloak; and I was writing, not my own opinion, but that of many of my countrymen still fond of such a hope. I wanted to have the true intentions of the man on whom they relied, as much as possible unveiled. As soon as the letter reached him, my "signalement" was given to all the authorities of the coast, so as to have me arrested if ever I attempted to cross the frontier again.... I have been in 1833 condemned to be shot in the back by a military commission sitting in Alessandria, as having led from without the agitation. Here in London I have exerted, as I will exert, what influence I possess with my countrymen to endeavour to raise them from the nothingness and worse than nothingness in which now they are; from English affairs I have kept myself entirely separated; nor sought the help of English people even for our Italian affairs. As to all the present agitation, I had nothing to do with it, on the beginning. I did not think that the time was properly chosen. But, when the patriots of the interior decided that they would attempt, nothing of course, was left to me than helping them; and so I did, or rather prepared me to do so, should a rising take place. It seems to me that the right of an Italian to work out from whatever place he finds himself in, the welfare of his country, ought to be clearly and boldly asserted by an English writer. Of the hopes I have of the Italian patriots succeeding at a not very remote period, in what they are now struggling for, I cannot now speak here. It would prove too long a subject for a letter; but I am in intention, if I find time for it, of publishing very soon, a Pamphlet on the question, showing how, all weary of slow, legal, national progress being interdicted to us, our only hope must lie in insurrection as the starting-point for a national education. If there are points upon which you want more notions, be so kind as to write, and meanwhile, with sincere thanks for the interest you take in my case, believe me now dear Sir,— Truly yours, 47 Devonshire Street, II A Prayer to God for the Planters, by an Exile. [The original is in French. It has probably not been published before. It was sent in 1846 to Mr William Shaen in response to a request for a paper on the abolition of slavery. It was to have appeared in Lady Blessington's Keepsake, presumably in a translation, but was not published in it. In sending it Mazzini writes: "To write one or two pages on abolitionism is just the same to me as to prove that the sun gives light and warmth; or to prove an axiom. So that I was during one full hour at a loss what to write, till my soul melted away in prayer."] God of pity, God of peace and love, forgive, oh forgive the planters. Their sin is great; but thy mercy is infinite. As of old thou didst make refreshing waters gush from the desert rock for the multitude of thy servants, so now make the living spring of charity gush out in the desert of their souls. Let the angel of repentance descend and settle on their dying pillow. And between them and thy justice, at their last hour,—for them and for their country, which they dishonour,—may the prayer rise up of all who suffer for thy holy cause, for thy holy truth, for the freedom of the peoples and of the Soul of man. Their sin is great. They have sinned, they are sinning still against thee and against Humanity, which is the interpreter of thy Thou hast placed, as symbol of the eye of thy Providence, one sun in heaven for the earth. Thou hast interwoven in one mighty harmony, of which human Music, Religion's eldest child, is but a faint and stammering echo, the worlds, those finite rays of thy infinite Thought, that move around us, like the scattered letters of a heavenly alphabet, which we shall know one day. In this fair physical Universe, which is the garment of the Idea, thou hast everywhere taught Unity, and the bright light of thy teaching shines upon their souls; but they have veiled the eyes of their souls, they have broken in pieces that which is so fair, and on the wreck of thy Unity they have built a warring Dualism: two natures, two laws, two ways of life. Have pity, Lord, forgive, oh forgive the planters. In History, which is thy life, manifesting itself progressively in time and space, thou hast set in their sight another fount of truth, whence in great waves flows the great thought of Unity, which is thy whole Law. Thou madest all mankind spring from one Adam; at the teaching of thy providence, more clearly seen from day to day, thou hast led man, collective, social man, from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to wage-earning; and that nought may be wanting to make the progression clear, thou makest now the nations to desire impatiently that to wage-earning association may succeed. And over these three stages, which are the image of thy triune working, hovers the holy voice of Golgotha, All ye are brothers, for ye are all one in God. And they have stopped their ears to the holy voice of Golgotha, they have shut their eyes to the evolution of Thought in History: they have said: we are And for the third witness of thy Truth, thou hast put a voice in each man's heart, an impulse in each man's conscience, which says: I am free; free because I am responsible, free because I am a man, made in God's image, inherently possessing in myself the powers and aspirations and destinies of all Humanity. And they have denied that this is the voice of all men. They have shut themselves up in their selfish Ego, and have said: this voice is ours alone, and they see not, wretched men that they are, that if they put a bound to it, they blot it out from all creation, since God did not create the planter but the man. They have sown hate, and they will reap revolt: they have denied the God of love, and they have provoked the God of vengeance. Listen not to their blasphemy, O Lord. Forgive, oh forgive the planters. O Lord, open their understandings and soften their hearts. Let the angel, that inspires good thoughts, descend upon them in their dreams by night. Let them hear through him the cry of horror that ascends from all Humanity that believes and loves;—the sorrowing cry of all who endure and fight for the Good in Europe, and whose confidence and faith is shaken by their stubborn crime;—the mocking cry of the princes and kings of the earth, who, when their subjects are full of turmoil, point to the proud republicans of America, who alone of men maintain the helotism of pagan ages;—the long anguish of Jesus, who, because of them, still suffers on his cross to-day! And when in the morning they awake, let their children lay their innocent curly heads beside their lips, and whisper, inspired by thee: "Father, father, free our brother, the black man; buy and sell no more the son of man for thirty pennies; see, this black man too has a mother and little children like us; Oh that his old mother could rejoice to see God of pity, God of peace and love, forgive, oh forgive the planters. Their sin is great, but thy mercy is infinite. Open in the desert of their souls the living spring of charity. Let the angel of repentance descend and settle on their dying pillow. And between them and thy justice, at their last hour,—for them and for their country, which they dishonour,—may the prayer rise up of all, who, like myself, suffer for thy holy cause, for thy holy truth, for the freedom of the peoples and of the Soul of man. Joseph Mazzini. III Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor [May 15, 1847]. Dear Mrs Taylor,—First of all let me tell you that my silence before your note has been owing to my having been most unpoetically ill, with head-ache, sore throat, prostration of forces, fever and other things, till I was thinking that Mr Taylor would perhaps get rid all at once of me and of the League: however Homoeopathy—that is taking nothing—has cured me: then that my silence after the note has been owing to a hope in which I have been indulging both on Friday evening, and on Saturday, to call on you unexpectedly and talk instead of writing. However that hope too—the other is Mr Taylor's hope—has vanished: and I find myself having so much to do that I doubt whether I will find a moment of freedom this week. So, I write, and hope to be forgiven for the past. And now to Poetry. Alas! After mature consideration, I find no definition at all; by you it is not needed; I am sure you have the thing in your own Soul, and that is better than all definitions one could supply; for Mr Taylor I fear no definition of mine would do. Suppose I gave a definition that seems to me very true, but that I ought to explain in ten pages at least. "Poetry is the feeling of a former and of a future world"[48]: he would find out "Poetry is the Religion of the individual Soul." "Religion is the Poetry of the collective Soul." I fear that not only he, but perhaps you too, would ask for explanations which would fill up a lecture, not a note. Suppose that I quoted lines like these: "A Poet's art Lies in tolerating wholly, and accounting for in part By his own heart's subtle working, those of every other heart" he would say that that is charity, and nothing else; we would say that it is incomplete. Suppose that I adopted yours—which, with due comments and interpretations, I am not far from—that "Poetry is the soul of the Universe," it would not avail. You gave it already, I am sure, and it was declared unsatisfactory. We must one day or other talk about this. I fear vaguely that even we do differ in some way respecting the essence of Poetry. I suspect that you leave out in your own definition the element of Action, which seems to me inseparable from it. Poetry is for me something like the third person of Trinity, the Holy Spirit, which is Action. But this amounts to declare incomplete, the poetry, for instance, of Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. Is that a heresy for you? If so, our definitions will not agree.—ever faithfully yours, Jos. Mazzini. IV Letter to Mr Peter Taylor [February 16, 1854]. [This letter is inserted, because of its historical importance. It is, I believe, the earliest existing mention of any scheme for a French protectorate in Tuscany. It also antedates by a few weeks the earliest known mention of Garibaldi's scheme for an expedition to Sicily. Mazzini's information respecting Louis Napoleon's plans was probably derived from Dr Conneau, but it was generally inaccurate.] My Dear Friend,—I write because I have no time for coming, and I write, I must avow, to silence conscience, with very little hope. Do not smile, and say "the man is mad"; but put your head in your two hands and try to solve this question: "is there any earthly way of getting one thousand pounds in a very short time, ten days, a fortnight at the most?" With you I have no secrets, and I shall state to you summarily the why. We must act: as early as possible in March: in fact as soon as the declaration of war or an action amounting to the same takes place, we must act, because the initiative is everything for us. The actual schemes of the French Emperor, assented to by your cabinet, are these: A Muratist movement in Naples: reinforcements in Rome ready to help, as Piedmont would object to the establishment of a French dynasty in the South. France offers to patronise the King of Piedmont to the North of Italy. Lombardy will be Piedmontese. But Lombardy and the Venetian territory would together with Piedmont form too large, too threatening a state. Lombardy and Venice shall therefore be divided. Venice like Greece will be given up to some foreign prince, or to Austria again if Austria yields and submits in other respects. Rome will remain to the Pope. Only as there are provinces so disaffected that the case is hopeless, from them and Tuscany a central Dukedom or Princedom will be formed under French patronage. Sicily will be given—the old scheme of 1848—to the Duke of Genoa, son of the Piedmontese king. Thus Italy will have two more divisions, Sicily and Venice; new foreign dynasties would be settled there, new interests would group themselves around them: a new partition would begin, with high sanction, a new phasis, and we should have to begin anew our secret work, our clandestine printing, our series of martyrdoms, as if nothing had been done. To all this I know only of a [one] remedy: to initiate: to give the leadership to the national party. The multitude will follow the first who acts; the very elements prepared by all these intrigues will accrue to us if we move first. And beyond all, to move in the South. We would thus check the French scheme before its realisation. As we would, for the present, leave Rome aside and untouched, we do not damage in the least the actual position of England with France. Garibaldi is here: ready to act. Garibaldi's name is all powerful among the Neapolitans, since the Roman affair of Velletri. I want to send him to Sicily, where they are ripe for insurrection and wishing for him as a leader. Of course another action would simultaneously take place in a point of the centre, and I would lead a third operation in the North. For these two, I have, though very little, still enough of money. For the first, that is for Garibaldi, I have none, and claiming it from Italy would imply expenses for travellers, risks, the unveiling of the secret, and uncertain indefinite time. Are there not to be found in England ten persons willing for the sake of Italy and for the sake of baffling schemes of French domination absolutely antagonistic to English interests, to take each £100 of our National Loan notes?[49]—or twenty ready to take £50 each? This is the problem. I know nobody almost. It must be the work of some Englishman. If any plan could be devised of certain fulfilment, but requiring longer time, the sum could be perhaps advanced by some person who would keep all that would come in by degrees. —ever yours affectionately, Joseph Mazzini. To friends whom you can trust, you may, under pledge of honour, communicate what you think proper. Feb. 16. 15 Radnor St. V Letter to Mr Peter Taylor [October 26, 1854]. My Dear Friend,—Are you astonished at our inertness? at our talking so much and doing so little? I often think that you feel so. I could explain everything in two hours of conversation; but take my word in spite of all, we are ripe for the aim, and that ere long we shall reach it. In fact, had I not been exceptionally First, on account of its enjoying liberty, it is so much withdrawn from the field of action; then we have, just as in 1848, a whole world of courtiers, of ministerial agents, of journalists, and even of clandestine-press-writers, spreading everywhere that the King will draw the sword one of these days, that France and England will cause the revolution to spring up in Naples, that you will quarrel with Austria about the Principalities, that a better opportunity will come, must come, if only we have patience for one month, for two months, for two weeks. There was a whole dream-dispelling work to be done before thinking of immediate action. This work is, for the two-thirds, done, the other third will take, perhaps some two months. The field will be mine then. The people, the working-classes, are admirable: they are mine, mine devotedly to blindness. One thing is out of doubt: any initiative will be an Italian one: one spark will settle the whole on fire, only, the initiative MUST be a successful one. This is the source of all my delays. I feel too certain of success after the first blow being struck for my risking uncautiously the first blow. The English agitation I am trying to spread would be of real importance to me, if taking a certain degree of consistence, both from the financial point of view and from the moral one. You have not an idea of how proud and stronger my working men do feel here, when they find themselves noticed, encouraged and helped in England. I trust you will do what is in your power to promote and help. How are you? How is your wife? Are you ever talking about me? against me? I am well in health, spite of the forcedly sedentary life I lead. I think very often, under these radiant skies, of the London fogs, and always regretfully. Individually speaking, I was evidently intended for an Englishman. What are you doing at Pinner? What little dogs have you caused to disappear? How many poor hens kept in a state of bondage, and tied by the leg somewhere, are awaiting for a revolutionist to untie them?... What do you read? What do you anticipate for England's politics? Do you smoke much?... I wish we could have a talk of one hour all together, with Joseph. VI Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor [March 19, 1857]. Thanks, my dear Friend, for your having remembered my name's day [St Joseph's Day]. I don't know why, but every anniversary concerning myself finds me very sad: those friendly whisperings are checking the tendency. The box has arrived. You have made out the only point of contact between Shakespeare and myself, on all the rest we deeply differ. He was an extraordinary poet: I am not. He was—spite of your interpretations—calm:[50] I am not. He looked on the world from above: I look at it from within and want to make a revolution. He was—if reports are correct—merrily poaching: I have always before my eyes, like a remorse, the large convulsion with which a poor thrush, shot by me at the age of sixteen, was twisting with her beak a bit of grass. He was the Lord of Individuality: all my tendency, if developed, would have been a generalising one. He was powerful: I am powerless—and so on, to the end of the chapter.—your friend, Joseph Mazzini. VII Two Letters to Mrs Milner-Gibson [Mrs Milner-Gibson had just lost a little boy. Mazzini was godfather to a younger brother.] [April 15, 1859.] Dear Friend,—What can I say? You believe, as I do, in God and immortality. It is there that you must find your comfort and strength. Love your boy as if he were alive, for in that you will have what will restore him to you in the series of existences, which follows this one. Become even better than This is all I can say. From me to you such commonplace words of comfort as the world generally gives would be a kind of sin. I suffer with your grief. I, who have no home now, know what the sorrows of home are,—they leave a scar in the heart, which never goes, and that is sad, but it is well. Cherish this scar, it is a pledge of the future. Do not give yourself up to the barren, cowardly sorrow, called despair. There is no death in the world except forgetfulness. Everything that loves and has loved to death meets again. Good-bye, my friend. Think of your health for the sake of your other children. God bless you in them,—your friend, Joseph. [This letter was succeeded by the following.] Dear Friend,—I have received your letters, they are more and more sad. You have been ill and you are unhappy. Your visit to the Continent will do you good physically, I hope, but as to your moral health, you must cure that yourself. Rouse your soul, which is in danger of being benumbed by sorrow; you will find at the bottom of it, I don't say happiness, I don't say even hope, but duty and faith in some affections which do count. For God's sake, do not despair: you have dear children to bring up; you can still do good, and you have friends who esteem and love you and suffer with your sufferings and find strength in your own. Ah me, what the devil should I do myself, if I allowed the little strength, which God has left me, to desert me, as it often threatens to do.... Good-bye. Yours with all my heart, Joseph. VIII Letter to Mr Peter Taylor [September 11, 1860]. Dear Peter,— I have yours of the 29th of Aug. written with an improved handwriting, and the article on Lady Byron. It is according to me, unwise and unjust: unwise, because to praise Lady Byron for her life's silence and to abuse the very man about whom she has chosen to be silent, is inconsistent: unjust, because it grounds a verdict on the wrongs of one party, without taking into account those of the other. Everybody seems to forget that Lady Byron did not only leave her husband for ever, going "À la promenade," but that she did set at him before, lawyers and doctors to try if she could make him be proved mad! I wish—no, I don't—that your wife should set at you Dr E— and Mr S— for such a purpose, only to see what you would do when discovering it, and I wish I had time to write, before dying, a book on Byron and abuse all England, a few women excepted, for the way she treats one of her greatest souls and minds: I shall never write the book nor—it begins to be clear—any other. Well, I do not go into particulars about our condition here [at Naples]. As a party we are going through that sort of method which you called one day a suicide, preparing and attempting things which are calling on us calumnies, abuse and persecution, but which are taken up by the other Party as soon as we are put out of the field. After having been baffled and most shamefully so, in an attempt against the Pope's dominions,[51] they are now, at a few days' distance, taking up our plan. We shall have to do the same, soon or late, concerning Rome, and then Venice. And we shall, if life endures. Only, I am worn out, morally and physically. Everything is now resting on Garibaldi: will he go on, without interruption, in his invading career, or will he not? That is the question. If he does, we shall have unity within five months: Austria, spite of the boasted position, will not hold up, if the proper means—a coup de main in the Tyrol, an insurrection in Ah! if you had, in England, condescended to see that the glorious declaration of non-interference ought to have begun by taking away the French interference in Rome! How many troubles and sacrifices you would have saved us!—ever your truly affectionate and grateful Joseph. [In another letter to Mr Taylor, dated June 5, 1860, he says:] Yes, I heard of Lady Byron's death and her last gift. I wish something came out, now that she is dead, to explain the separation mystery. I shall ever regret the burning of the memoirs, which was a crime towards Byron; and I have ever indulged in the dream that a copy should be extant in somebody's hands to come out after the disappearing of the principal actors. I saw Lady Byron twice, and she looked to me a good sharp positive somewhat dry puritanical woman, sad from the past, conscious of not having been altogether right and doing good half for good-doing's sake, half for forgetfulness' sake. But I am so thoroughly Byronian, so deeply convinced that he has been wronged by everybody, that my impression cannot be trusted. IX Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor [February 9, 1865] Dear Clementia,— I shall send back the magazine: read the article again: take away all phrases and periphrases: squeeze every period; and then send to me the first idea or view which strikes you as new to yourself. I shall retract. The whole article amounts to this: repeating fifty times in rather harmonious words that Art is the reproduction of Beauty, etc., etc. Many thanks. Only, what is Beauty? How to discern it? Why is Nature beautiful? Are we to copy, to reproduce Nature? or to add a work of our own, finding out the idea shut in within every symbol? Is Nature anything but the symbolic representation of some truth, which we are to evolve? Or is the drapery of Nature, Nature? Miss C—— says that the Artist must choose the object which is Beautiful. Is not every object more or less so? Is not the grotesque causing the beautiful to shine by contrast? Are the grave-diggers to be suppressed in Hamlet? Without sifting the nature of Beauty, without giving some definition of it, nobody can attempt to construct a Hierarchy of Art. Miss C. has not even attempted to do so. Still you have been in raptures. Something, therefore, must be in the article. I have not been able to make it out. I beg pardon humbly. That is all I can say. —ever affectionately yours, Joseph. Thursday. X Letter to Mr William Malleson [Nov. 11, 1865]. My Dear Friend,—I feel ashamed, but I have been overwhelmed by work, not flourishing in health, although better now, and altogether unable to fulfil what I had promised. Then, and after all, I write to say that I cannot fulfil it. I said that I would write about the education of your son. I find that I cannot. I ought to know him, his tendencies, his capabilities, what he has already learned. To give general rules is nothing. He may require special ones. I have mentioned his tendencies. That must be your special object. Every man is a speciality, is capable of some definite thing. You must try to discover that special tendency, and then frame his education accordingly. After a general teaching of those branches which are good for any man, direct his studies towards the development of that special tendency which you will have discovered. Education means drawing out, educere, what is in the boy: not creating in him what is not. You cannot create. But one thing is, must be common to all. You must give him a proper notion of what Life is, and of what the world in which he has been put for the fulfilment of a task is. Life is a duty, a function, a mission. For God's sake, do not teach him any Benthamite theory about happiness either individual or collective. A creed of individual happiness would make him an egotist: a creed of collective happiness will reach the same result soon or late. He will perhaps dream Utopias, fight for them, whilst young; then, when he will find that he cannot realise rapidly the dream of his soul, he will turn back to himself and try to conquer his own happiness: sink into egotism. Teach him that Life has no sense unless being a task:—that happiness may, like sunshine on a traveller, come to him, and he must welcome it and bless God for it; but that to look for it is destroying both the moral man and his duty and most likely the possibility of ever enjoying it:—that to improve himself, morally and intellectually, for the sake of improving his fellow-creatures, is his task:—that he must try to get at Truth and then represent it, in words and deeds, fearlessly and perennially:—that to get at Truth, two criteria have been given to him, his own conscience and tradition, the conscience of mankind:—that whenever he will find the inspiration of his own conscience harmonising with that of mankind, sought for not in the history of a single period or of a single people, but of all periods and peoples, then he is sure of having Truth within his grasp:—that the basis of all Truth is the knowledge of the Law of Life, which is indefinite Progression:—that to this Law he must be a servant. This knowledge of the Law of Progression must be your aim in all your teaching. Elementary Astronomy, elementary Geology, ought to be taught as soon as possible. Then, universal History, then Languages. The difficult thing is to get the proper teaching. When I speak, for instance, of Astronomy, I mean a survey of the Universe, of which the Earth is part, grounded on Herschel's theory and tending to prove how everything is the exponent of a Law of Progression, how the Law is one, how every part of the Universe accomplishes a function in the whole. Herschel, Nichol, Guillemin's recently translated "Heavens" are the guides to be chosen. Languages are easily learned in boyhood. French, German, I would not teach any positive Religion; but the great fundamental Trinity, God, the immortality of the soul, the necessity of a religion as a common link of brotherhood for mankind, grounded on the acknowledgment of the Law of Progression. At a later period he will choose. Geography of course will be taught. But everything taught in a general way and not applied is easily forgot. The best way is to have a collection of good maps and to give him the habit of never reading a historical book or even a tale without following it up on the map. It is the best and most lasting way. Avoid novels and tales. Give him a taste for historical books and scientific descriptive illustrated books of natural history travels, etc. In one word, a religious conception of life—then a full notion of the world he lives in—then the special branch of activity to which he seems inclined: that is the whole of education for your boy. Forgive these hurried notes. Apply to me freely for any detail or special suggestion. I shall be most happy to answer. Give my love to Mrs Malleson and to Miss K. M. How are they? How is your father? Where are you all now?—Ever affectionately yours, Joseph Mazzini. Saturday. XI Rest. [Written for the Pen and Pencil Club in April 1867, and privately published in 1877, with other papers written by its members.] Dearest Friend,—The subject of your meeting of to-morrow is so suggestive that I would gladly join you all, and write an essay on it, if I had health and time. I have neither, and, perhaps, better so. My essay, I candidly avow, would tend to prove that no essay ought to be written on the subject. It has no reality. A sort of intuitive instinct led you to couple "Ghosts and Rest" together. There is, here down,[52] and there ought to be, no Rest. Life is an aim; an aim which can be approached, not reached, here down. There is, therefore, no rest. Rest is immoral. It is not mine now to give a definition of the aim; whatever it is, there is one, there must be one. Without it, Life has no sense. It is atheistical; and moreover an irony and a deception. I entertain all possible respect for the members of your Club; but I venture to say that any contribution on Rest which will not exhibit at the top a definition of Life will wander sadly between wild arbitrary intellectual display and commonplaces. Life is no sinecure, no "recherche du bonheur" to be secured, as the promulgators of the theory had it, by guillotine, or, as their less energetic followers have it, by railway shares, selfishness, or contemplation. Life is, as Schiller said, "a battle and a march"; a battle for Good against Evil, for Justice against arbitrary privileges, for Liberty against Oppression, for associated Love against Individualism; a march onwards to Self, through collective Perfecting to the progressive realisation of an Ideal, which is only dawning to our mind and soul. Shall the battle be finally won during life-time? Shall it on Earth? Are we believing in a millennium? Don't we feel that the spiral curve through which we ascend had its beginning elsewhere, and has its end, if any, beyond this terrestrial world of ours. Where is then a possible foundation for your essays and sketches? Goethe's "Contemplation" has created a multitude of little sects aiming at Rest, where is no rest, falsifying art, the element of which is evolution, not reproduction, transformation, not contemplation, and enervating the soul in self-abdicating Brahmanic attempts. For God's sake let not your Club add one little sect to the fatally existing hundreds! There is nothing to be looked for in life except the uninterrupted fulfilment of Duty, and, not Rest, but consolation and strengthening from Love. There is, not Rest, but a promise, a shadowing forth of Rest in Love. Only there must be in Love absolute trust; and it is very seldom that this blessing depends [? descends] on us. The child goes to sleep, a dreamless sleep, with unbounded trust, on the mother's bosom; but our sleep is a restless one, agitated by sad dreams and alarms. You will smile at my lugubrious turn of mind; but if I was one Joseph Mazzini. XII Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor [From Lugano, December 12, 1868.] Dear Clementia,— I am better, although not so much as my friends here suppose. I feel, from various little symptoms, as if I could any week have the complaint back. I may, and hope to be mistaken, however. So, let us accept what instalment is granted, and not think of the future. I might give myself an additional chance, if I could keep absolutely silent and motionless during one month. But I cannot. There is—at least—a possibility of the Republic being proclaimed in Spain; and if so, we must try to follow, a preparatory very complex work is therefore unavoidable. It is useless to tell me: "if you keep quiet now, you will be able to work better henceforward." The important thing is to work now. Your cabinet[53] is a shameful contrivance.... It is an implement good for the conquest of the Irish measure, and soon after, I think, the majority will split into two or three fractions. As to your—quite forgotten—international life, the main thing about which, according to me, you ought to care, Lord Clarendon's policy will be a French and Austrian policy. What does Peter say? Is he still enthusiastic about Gladstone? Your women-emancipating movement is fairly imitated in Italy. We have a central committee of ladies in Naples, and sub-committees here and there, and one or two members of our Try to be well: give my love to Peter and believe in the deep and lasting affection of Joseph. XIII Letter to Mr William Shaen [From Gaeta, Oct. 12, 1870]. Dear Shaen,—I know that a few words from me and from here will please you. You do not forget me, and you have never been forgotten: none is of those whom I loved in England. For many reasons, I cannot write to all my friends, and they know the general state of things concerning me from good, faithful, dear Caroline.[54] I am, physically, tolerably well; for the rest "fata viam invenient." I know that you have been and are very active in the "Woman's Emancipation Movement." Every good cause has ever found you ready to help; and I had no doubt of your coming forward in one which ought to be a matter of simple duty for anyone believing that there is but one God—one Life—one Law of progress through Love, Equality and Association for it. Still, it is comforting to hear of it. The movement has begun and with some degree of power in Italy too: it would rapidly and successfully increase had we not to complete, before all other things, our national edifice. Ever and most affectionately yours, Jos. Mazzini. 28/9/70, Gaeta. This note was written, as you see, long ago: and through some reason or other, it did not go; and I am able now to add that to-morrow I shall be free, and the day after I shall leave Gaeta. The amnesty, of course, I shall refuse to avail myself of! I must be free of doing whatever I think right and without even the shadow of ungratefulness to any body—even to a King. After a few days I shall therefore leave Italy again. It may be that during next month I come—for one month—to see my English friends: I wish and hope so. Meanwhile: live and prosper.—Yours ever, Joseph. 12/10/70. |
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