The Man
Poetic temperament--Defects as a thinker--Greatness as a
moral teacher--Strength and weakness as a politician--The
man.
Carlyle said that Mazzini was "by nature a little lyrical poet." The
implication was contemptuous, but it had a bottom of truth. Mazzini,
indeed, save for his early aspirations to the drama, never dreamed of
being a poet. His conception of the poet's function was so high, the
qualities he demanded of him so exacting, that, if he ever felt the
call, he put it away, no doubt, as something to which he could not
reach. It is doubtful even whether he wrote more than one poem when a
youth. He aspired only to be critic, to do something to prepare the
way for the poet of the future. But he had qualities, that would have
made of him a poet of no mean order. There are many passages in his
writings, which show his deep communion with nature. When he writes of
"the vast ocean, dashing, like a wave of eternal poetry, against the
barren rocks of Brittany," or describes a sunrise from the Alps,--"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,"--truly the consecration and
the poet's dream are his. His critical essays prove with what
spiritual insight he would have touched the poetry of man and society.
We have seen how marvellous for an outsider was his presentiment of
the future of music. And his whole intellectual make, alike in
strength and weakness, is that of the artist,--of the artist, that is,
as he conceived him, God's messenger to the heart of man. He had
little power of scientific thought, of accurate reasoning or careful
arrangement and analysis of facts. It led to a curious misconception
of scientific method. "Science," he says,--"the true, great, fruitful
science,--is as much intuition as experiment." He generalises with a
hazardous confidence. Sometimes he uses words, that are no more than
words, to push difficulties into a corner and stand in front of them.
In spite of his allegiance to "tradition," he generally prefers
deductive to inductive reasoning. "Principles prevail over facts," as
he says; but he often does not see, in spite of his own cautions, how,
without a supreme respect for facts, a principle may hang not on the
eternal truths, but on the fancy of a solitary brain. His own
scientific studies were small; save for some acquaintance with
astronomy and geography,--the former to feed his sense of the
infinite, the latter for its relationship to nationality,--he seems to
have given no attention to any branch of science. He accepted without
question the Genesis story of the creation of man. At a time when
Darwinism was bringing a sword into the intellectual world, he lived
apparently uninterested and untouched by it.
The same defect of method appears in his other studies. Keen as was
his interest in social questions, he evidently had no grasp of
economic science; beyond Adam Smith, it is doubtful whether he read
any of the great economists, and at a later date he entirely failed
to understand the economic side of Karl Marx. His theories of history,
again, so subordinate everything to his desire to make it didactic,
that he regarded research and accuracy as comparatively unimportant.
He thought,--rash man,--that facts had already been accumulated in
sufficient abundance and certainty. Greatly indeed he conceived the
historian's ultimate function--to discover the laws of human progress,
and be "prophet of a higher social end"; but he slurred over the
difficulty of reading facts aright, and was ever prone to let fancy
take their place. He would have made the historian's method deductive
to a dangerous degree, and had him fill the gaps of history from an
abstract study of human nature; he apparently approved the Thucydidean
method of invented speeches.
Here and everywhere he was apt to look down on erudition. He believed
that Genius,--a kind of mystic, God-inspired faculty, that lived on
intuition and not on painfully acquired knowledge,--discovers at a
glance the secrets of nature and ethics and history. "Where we see
only the confused light of the Milky Way, they see stars." Though he
would have himself disclaimed the title to genius, he had a supreme
confidence in his own thought. It was difficult for him to own an
error, and hence he never learnt from his mistakes. It was true of
him, as Renan said of Lamennais, that "when a man believes that he
possesses all truth, he naturally disdains the painful, humble path of
research, and regards the investigation of details as a pure
dilettante fancy." This was no doubt the chief cause why his mind so
soon stopped growing. We find in his early writings, when he was
twenty-seven or twenty-eight, the germ, and generally the developed
form of every doctrine that he preached. His character developed
normally, but not his intellect. Religion, ethics, politics, social
theories, literary canons,--all issued forth at once from his
early-ripened brain, and fixed themselves once for all. He was always
reluctant to enquire for or admit new knowledge. It is strange, lover
of books though he was, how restricted sometimes was his range of
reading. His poets were the poets of his youth and early manhood, and
he read few that wrote after 1840. Closely as he studied the Gospels,
he seems to have given little or no attention to exegesis. In spite of
his keen interest in Utilitarianism, there is no trace that he read
the later writers of the school. Though so long in intimate touch with
English political thought, he does not seem to have known Burke or
Ricardo or the Mills or Herbert Spencer.
As a thinker, therefore, his defects are great. His thought, indeed,
always has its value, coming as it does from a man of very great
intellectual power and large experience of life, one who fearlessly
penetrated to the heart of things, and was therefore in the true sense
original. Its range is wonderful for one who led so strenuous a life
of action. Faulty as his argument often is, obvious as are the gaps,
he wrote comparatively few pages, that are not stamped with great and
stimulating thought. But his mind was too loosely organised, too often
out of touch with contemporary knowledge. He has left an imposing and
suggestive system, and yet perhaps it somehow fails to add greatly to
the sum of human knowledge. But it is just the qualities, that
depreciate him as a thinker, which make him great as a moral teacher.
His want of logic, his loose use of words hurt not here. The involved
and rushing language, like a tumbling mountain stream, becomes a
strength. That very rigidity, that lifelong iteration of a few
dominant ideas, carry force and conviction, that a more agile
intellect were powerless to give. His warm and palpitating
generalisations, for all the flaws in their reasoning, bear the
irrefutable mark of moral reality. He had that union of real
intellectual force and spiritual fervour, that gives the insight into
moral truth, and learns the secrets of heaven and hell. He was able to
be a great moralist, because in a rare degree he had himself the moral
sense, because the passion for righteousness had so penetrated all his
being, that he could speak and be understood on the deep things of
God, had something in his own soul that found its way to other souls.
And, above all, he spoke with authority. Absolute confidence in his
own beliefs was joined to truest personal humility, and made the
prophet. Humblest and least ambitious of men, he felt his call from
God; and in God's name he was assertive, dogmatic, sometimes seemingly
egotistic. If he spoke authoritatively and intolerantly, it was that a
duty was laid upon him, and woe to him if he preached it not. His
principles were living and victorious certainties to him. "If a
principle is true," he said, "its applications are not only possible
but inevitable." And this unquestioning conviction made him as
fearless morally as he was intellectually,--fearless with the supreme
bravery of one who never shrinks from duty,--fearless not only for
himself but others, bridling all the impulsive tenderness within him,
and requiring of his fellow-workers the same readiness for sacrifice,
which he exacted of himself. And so his words, aflame from a pure and
passionate heart, come with the intensity of prophetic power. Beyond
the words of any other man of modern times, they bring counsel and
comfort to those who have drunk of the misery and stir and hope of the
age. They have the greater virtue, that impels their hearers to do
likewise. Mazzini is one of the small band, who have the strength as
well as the love of Christ, not only the unselfishness that draws, but
the conviction and the power that command, who impose their own
beliefs and make disciples.
Would he, had he had the opportunity, have done what he held higher
than to teach through books, and been the missionary of a religion?
Had Italy been freed in 1848, we may be sure he would have left his
desk, forsaken politics, and gone about the land, preaching faith in
God and Progress and Humanity. Probably no other man, since the
Reformation, has had such apostolic power. Would his mission have
found an answer or ended in pitiable collapse? He would probably have
had no better fate than others, who have tried to found new churches.
There may be room for new faiths, but there is little for new churches
in the world to-day. But this does not necessarily mean failure. His
church might have been empty, his state religion proved a soulless
husk; but in the communion of scattered men and women, who are groping
for the truth, he might have laid a cornerstone of that church, which
is neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, which without forms
or unity of doctrine, spreads the unity of spiritual truth.
Something, even as it is, he has done for this. His creed may fail to
content the knowledge of to-day, but he stands a convincing witness to
the spiritual, to the eternal needs of the soul, to religion as the
master fact of life, though creeds may fail and systems perish.
* * * * *
How does he rank as a politician? Our estimate must be a mixed one. As
a political thinker he stands high. He has left a theory of the state,
that is priceless because informed by a great moral ideal. And apart
from this, it has its value from his wide and profound knowledge of
modern politics and the practical sense that almost always keeps his
idealism in touch with facts. His faith in democracy, the optimism
which came of his trust in Providence, his cautious handling of
economic tendencies saved him from the mistakes of Carlyle and Ruskin.
His conviction that the common-sense of the people was feeling out its
way independently of any theory or school, kept him from the
short-lived formulas of the individualists. His deeper knowledge of
men and deeper reading of history gave him a saner and completer view
than that of the collectivists. None of them, not even Ruskin, can
match the warmth and inspiration of a conception, that raises politics
to be the instrument of the divine plan,--an instrument not only to
destroy injustice and poverty, but to redeem the highest part of man
and bring the rule of brotherhood and unity and social peace. In the
detailed application of his political doctrines he often failed from
that same inaccessibility to facts, which marred him otherwise. His
republic missed the essential; his theories of democratic government
are vague and hardly satisfy. But even here he is the prophet of one
great enduring principle. Among the statesmen of the century, he is
almost the only one, who understood what nationality meant, saw its
essential relationship to democracy, and put it on an unassailable
foundation. It was this that made him teacher of Italian Unity, and
therefore maker of modern Italy. Whether without him Italy would be
united to-day, we cannot tell; but at all events it was he who gave
the impulse, his bold vision that saw that the hard consummation was
attainable, and gave others too the faith to see it.
As a political thinker, then, he is great; as a practical political
worker, he largely failed. True, he had many of a statesman's
qualities. He often read character acutely, though his confidence in
men sometimes deceived him, and again and again he was the victim of
informers. He had rare industry and considerable organising power;
though, owing to his solitary work, he had learned to bury himself too
much in details,--in the mass of correspondence and the immense labour
he put out to scrape together little funds,--and in them he sometimes
neglected the survey of the whole. Above all, as he proved at Rome, he
had the true statesman's gift of leadership and inspiration. But it is
more than doubtful whether, even under happier circumstances, he would
have been an effective politician. His knowledge of human nature was
more subtle in the abstract than in the concrete; individuals were to
him too much wholly good or wholly bad, and he did not recognise how
complex are the motives that sway puzzled humanity. He could rarely
take a sane, unprejudiced view of a situation. It amazes us that he
expected Pio Nono to respond to his appeal in 1847, and thought that,
if the republic came at Rome in 1870, it would found a state religion.
His misconception of Piedmontese policy throughout the fifties is a
yet stronger illustration of distorted vision. This was one of the
reasons why he found it so difficult to compromise. He could not
distinguish non-essentials from essentials, and it was nearly as hard
for him to give way on the one as on the other. Compromise in small or
great seemed cowardice, and there was no doubt a strain of egotism in
his obstinacy. It humiliated him to surrender any detail of the
theories, which he preached with such undiscriminating confidence.
* * * * *
But one would fain close not with the thinker or the moral teacher or
the politician, but the man. Mazzini's personal life was one of a very
rare purity and beauty, that stands out in his generation noblest and
faithfullest and most inspired. Its only serious flaw lies in those
few lapses from public candour, which have been noted in these pages.
Sometimes he was bitter and intolerant, but the provocation was great.
In earlier life he was often querulous and self-absorbed, but it may
be counted to him, that, with his sensitive nature, he came through
loneliness and poverty with his moral strength unbroken. Except for
these, the critic's microscope can find no specks. Brave, earnest,
true, without trace of affectation, he bore the stamp of whitest
sincerity. Gentle, affectionate, pure as few are pure, he was friend
and counsellor and inspirer to those who knew him, gripping and
subduing them with that wondrous sympathy of his, that came of
burning love of goodness and made the saving of a soul the highest
thing in life. That generosity, which made him share purse and clothes
with others perhaps less destitute than himself, and give half his
scanty income to help a woman and children that he hardly knew, made
him lavish out of his busy days time and thought to help struggling
souls. Ever intense in his affections, grateful for any act of
kindness, yearning for friendship with the yearning of the homeless
man, he was one to draw others with bonds of love.
He had a large and loving view of life. Pettiness and malice and
jealousy had very little place in it. Passionate though he was for
morality, he was, outside his political work and controversies and an
occasional touch of cynicism in his talk, a very tolerant man. No
person has, he said, "a right to judge a special case without positive
data on the nature of the fact." He was angry and impatient with the
"cavilling spirit of mediocrity," that takes pleasure in the lapses of
"the mighty-souled." Among his friends he never sermonised, and he had
no desire to bend their private life to his own pattern. Ever more or
less sad himself, he rejoiced in their happiness. "You are a happy
mortal," he writes to one of them on his marriage. "I am,
notwithstanding my dislike for _happiness_, truly glad that you are
so." Never man had more joy in others' home felicity. It was only
among his fellow-revolutionists, whom he thought of as partners in his
own high call, that he was exacting and sometimes ungenerous, though
he pleaded earnestly with them that public work should leave room for
the inner life of love and friendship. In his political controversies,
it must be confessed, his equanimity deserted him, and he is often
intolerant and unfair. He was too ready to think that bad politics
implied bad morals, and his hatred of Louis Napoleon and Cavour made
him pen pages, that one would gladly not remember. But even in
politics he could sometimes do justice to an opponent, who obviously
acted from high convictions; and he was one of the few Italian
nationalists, who could appreciate the motives of the Catholic
Volunteers.
But his essential greatness lies on the active side. Above all else he
shines out white in that consuming love of humanity, that accepted
poverty and weariness and danger, that made him forego home and love,
comfort and congenial work, and give himself to one long,
self-forgetting service for the good of men. Duty was no abstract
precept with him, but part of his very being. In adversity and trial
he had schooled himself to follow her, till disobedience to her call
became almost impossible, and he did not wait for her to speak but
sought her out. It was nearly allied to his almost superstitious fear
of personal happiness. Those miserable years in Switzerland and London
wrought on him, till melancholy grew to a habit. He lost something of
it afterwards in the society of his English friends, but it never left
him; and it tinted all his life with the gentle sadness, which is near
akin to spiritual yearnings and large-hearted love. Sunless and
unwholesome as it seems at times, after all, as with the Man of
sorrows, it purged him to the same forgetfulness of self. It was no
enervating grief; "do not allow yourself to be weakened and
self-absorbed by your trouble" was his perennial lesson to friends,
who had lost dear ones. His was the "other part of grief, the noble
part, which makes the soul great and lifts it up." "By dint of
repeating to myself," he once wrote to Mrs Carlyle, "that there is no
happiness under the moon, that life is a self-sacrifice meant for
some higher and happier thing; that to have a few loving beings, or if
none, to have a mother watching you from Italy or from Heaven (it is
all the same) ought to be quite enough to preserve us from falling."
He, to a degree that few have done, trod self victoriously under;
habitually and systematically year by year, untempted by failure or
success, by misery or comparative happiness, he denied himself even
the little indulgences and relaxations and declensions from the strait
hard path, by which most good men make their compromise with the world
and flesh. So remorselessly was duty law to him, that sometimes work
and sacrifice became ends in themselves; and he laboured painfully on
in the path which he had chosen, when it would have served his cause
better to have rested or turned to other activities. And the unbending
labour had its fruit in that wonderful sum of his life's work, that,
beyond all the exacting details of his political organisation, has
left its stamp on modern Europe, has left so vast a body of thought in
half the provinces of the human mind, has its yet richer legacy in the
example of a life given perfectly and wholly to the cause of men.
He was not the mere conscientious worker only; he lived in the light
of a spiritual vision, and that light radiated in almost every page he
wrote, on every man and woman whom he touched. Besides the sense of
duty he had faith. "He was," writes a living English statesman,
"perhaps the most impressive person I have ever seen, with a fiery
intensity of faith in his own principles and in their ultimate
triumph, which made him seem inspired; a man to waken sleeping souls,
and fill them with his own fervour." He loved to commune with those of
his own spiritual kin,--Dante, Savonarola, Cromwell,--men who had the
same undoubting faith in the righteousness of their cause and their
fellow-work with God,--men, it may be, one-sided and intellectually
incomplete, but gifted with the power to do great things and lift up
life. And so great principles and nobleness of aim carried him through
a series of practical mistakes, and left his life to be a permanent
enriching of the race. What if he dreamed dreams, that for generations
yet may be no more than dreams? What if his mental ken reached not to
all the knowledge of the age? What if he marred his work by mistakes
and miscalculations? His errors have passed; his intellectual
limitations can be supplied. His was the rarer and the greater part,
to lift men out of the low air of common life up to the heights, where
thought is larger, and life runs richer, and the great verities are
seen, undimmed by self and sophistry. The idealist is still mankind's
best friend; and he does most for the race, who purges its spiritual
vision, and breathes into cold duty, till it becomes a thing of life
and passion and power. Greater still is he, who is not idealist only,
but saint and hero, and in his life bears witness to the truth he
teaches. Such saint and hero and idealist Mazzini was; and while men
and women live, who would be true to themselves and to their call, who
value sacrifice and duty above power and success, so long will there
be those, who will love him and be taught by him.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF MAZZINI'S HANDWRITING.]
Appendix A
SOME UNPUBLISHED (IN ONE CASE PRIVATELY PUBLISHED) LETTERS
AND PAPERS, WRITTEN BY MAZZINI.
1. _Letter to Mr W. E. Hickson, about 1844._
2. _A Prayer for the Planters, 1846._
3. _Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 1847._
4. _Letter to Mr Peter Taylor, February 1854._
5. _Letter to Mr Peter Taylor, October 1854._
6. _Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 1857._
7. _Two Letters to Mrs Milner-Gibson, 1859._
8. _Letter to Mr Peter Taylor, 1860._
9. _Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 1865._
10. _Letter to Mr W. Malleson, 1865._
11. _Rest. A Paper written for the Pen and Pencil Club, 1867._
12. _Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 1868._
13. _Letter to Mr William Shaen, 1870._
I
LETTER TO Mr W. E. HICKSON, EDITOR OF THE _Westminster Review_
(probably in 1844).
[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, at Savona, in the fortress for five months: and
afterwards, sent in exile, without leave of seeing anybody, except my
parents. There was no duration determined; but I was told that my
subsequent conduct would shorten or prolong the time of my being an
exile. I came through Savoy and Switzerland to France, at a time in
which the Government of Louis Philippe, not yet acknowledged by the
absolutist Governments, was active in exciting all insurrectional
schemes, both in Spain and Italy. I merged, of course into them.
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 likely to be
connected with the republican agitation in France, I was ordered to
leave France. I protested, and claimed the common justice of a trial;
but unsuccessfully. My presence at Marseilles was imperiously required
by the interests of the Association; the writing, publishing, and
sending to Italy the correspondencies with the country, for which
Marseilles was offering every facility, the interviews with Italian
patriots who flocked to Marseilles for instructions and
communications, were all resting on me. I decided to stop; and
concealed myself. During one year I succeeded in baffling all the
activity of the French police, and of our own spies. But it was
through the most rigorous seclusion you can imagine. During one year,
I remember having had only twice, a breath of fresh air in the night,
once dressed in woman's garb, the other as a Garde-National. At last
things had reached such a point that a general rising was thought of.
I left France and went to Geneva: there to await for the event, and
prepare an expedition into Savoy, so as to divide the forces of the
enemy and establish co-operation between the patriots in Italy and
their exiles. How the hopes of an insurrection failed in Italy, the
fourth of my letters in the "Monthly Chronicle" will tell you. How we
too failed, through our military leader, General Ramorino, in the
attempt on Savoy--an attempt I thought it our duty to realise, as a
practical teaching to our countrymen, that promises, once given, are
to be kept,--would now be too long to say. But a tolerably true
account of the enterprise is to be found in one of the volumes of
"Histoire de Dix Ans" _par_ Louis Blanc. Meanwhile the attempt, once
unsuccessful, drew upon Switzerland and _à fortiori_ upon me, the
anger of all Governments. Notes were literally showering upon the poor
Swiss Cantons, where we sojourned. The most of us left Switzerland for
France or England. I with few others remained. Driven away from
Geneva, I went to the Canton de Vaud: driven away from there, to
Berne. There, owing to the friendship of some of the members of the
Government, I stopped for some time, keeping a very secluded life. At
last the insistence of the foreign Embassies prevailed upon the
weakness of the Bernese Government, and I was obliged to go to
Solothurn. Meanwhile the principles, embodied in our writings and in
our associations had awakened the sympathies of the Swiss patriots. A
National Association was founded on a ground of brotherhood with our
own. The persecutions with which the unwilling but weak Swiss
Governments were hunting me, excited almost as much indignation as the
opening of the letters here. The weakness of the Cantons had its
source in the deficiency of national unity, in the detestable
organisation of the Central Power, on the old _Pacte Federal_, forced
by the Allies on Switzerland at the overthrow of Napoleon. I was
requested to write a periodical advocating and unifying under our
political belief, the national feelings. Funds were given. The "Jeune
Suisse" was established. It appeared twice a week in French and in
German, for the course of one year. Through the German exiles, and
working-men, through the Tyrolese working-men, rather numerous in the
Canton of Zürich, through the Italian Tessin, and the frequent contact
with Italian people travelling to the frontier, the spirit of liberty
began to spread again in the countries approaching Switzerland. The
terrors of the Governments re-excited the persecution. They threatened
Switzerland with war. German troops came to the frontier, M. Thiers
was menacing to ruin Swiss commercial resources with a "blocus
hermetique." We were sent away. The paper suppressed; the most
horrible calumnies spread against us: all exiles left with or without
compulsion. I decided to remain as long as necessary to prove to the
Swiss people, that they were the slaves of the Foreign Powers, and
devoid of all real liberty, of all independence. During seven months,
I went from place to place, from house to house, living in places
apparently empty, with mats at the windows, without even going beyond
the room, except when receiving advices of the house being suspected:
then with a guide, I was crossing the mountains in the night, and
going to another shelter. While the Governments were raging, I
received from all classes of population marks of sympathy that made
and still make me consider Switzerland as a second Fatherland.
Ministers [of religion] were inviting me to their houses as one of
their family. [At] Grenchen, a village of a thousand inhabitants, near
Solothurn, when I had spent one year, in an establishment of baths, I
was, during the storm, made citizen spontaneously and without expense.
The poor people, good souls of the village, believed that as a Swiss
citizen, I would be respected; the grant of course, was not admitted.
Still had I been alone, I would have, hardened as I was to all
privations, kept on resisting; [but I was not alone] so I decided to
leave and come to England. It was then that I had a correspondence
with the Duke of Montebello, which ended in his sending three
passports for us to a place I named; and in January or February 1837 I
landed in England.
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,
JOSEPH MAZZINI.
47 Devonshire Street,
Queen Square.
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 law on
earth. The Spirit of Evil, which tempted Jesus, thy son so dear to
Genius and to Love, by offering him, when he began his divine career,
the riches and the thrones of earth, has also tempted them, men bereft
of Genius and of Love, by taking the semblance of the idol, which is
self-interest. They have yielded. They are the bondsmen of the senses,
and have forsworn knowledge and feeling. They have set the slave in
the place of man, the fetish of the sugar-cane in the place of thy
holy image. But thou, didst thou not hear thy son, so dear to Genius
and to Love, when he prayed for those who slew him? Forgive them,
Father, forgive the planters too.
* * * * *
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 not brothers, we are masters and slaves_. They have
kept one page alone of the Great Book, the page that tells of Cain and
Abel, of Violence and Right; and they have said to themselves: _there
are then two races of men, the race that is accursed, and the race
that is privileged, and of this last race are we_; they know not that
the sign of thy curse is on their own forehead, since it is by
Violence alone that they make slaves of men. Have pity, Lord, forgive,
oh forgive the planters.
* * * * *
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 him
proud and free! that his children could smile on him, fresh and happy,
in the morning, as we smile now on you, father."
* * * * *
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 that it belongs
to Byron, and would find himself pledged to refuse it. Suppose that I
gave one of mine:
"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.
King's Road, Chelsea.
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 prudent and calm,
action would have been already initiated. It would be any day, were it
not for Piedmont and the "Western Powers." Piedmont is our curse.
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 cigars and sherry, and then be back where I am
wanted.... Ever your friend,
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
(Translated from the French)
[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 you are by thinking of him, for this
will make a bond of love and mutual influence between you and him.
Think of him when you are doing good. Think of him, when impulses of
selfishness or human frailty assail you. Be good and strong. Give your
other children the love he gave them himself. And count on God. There
is immortality to link the mother and the child, and only
forgetfulness can break it. I have heard of his last words and kisses:
he loved you to his last moment, love him to yours, and believe it,
this will have been but the parting for a journey.
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 the Venetian
mountainous districts, an attack by land, and a landing near
Trieste--are adopted. If he does not, we shall have slumber, then
anarchy--then--a little later--unity. _That_ you may consider as
settled, and so far so good. The rest is all wrong. And as for myself
don't talk of either prosperity or consciousness of having done, etc.
All that is chaff. The only real good thing would be to have unity
atchieved [sic] 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.
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, and Italian
ought to be taught. Two years of study may put the boy in
communication with three worlds.
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 of
_your_ Artists, I would sketch a man on the scaffold going to die for
a great Idea, for the cause of Truth, with his eye looking trustfully
on a loving woman, whose finger would trustfully and smilingly point
out to him the unbounded. Under the sketch I would write, not Rest,
but "a Promise of Rest." Addio: tell me one word about the point of
view of your contributors.--Ever affectionately yours,
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 House pleading for them. All
this is very right, and I hope that next year, European events will
help this movement; but meanwhile, I should wish very much that,
whilst you attack men with their gross injustice, you should teach
women to _deserve_ their emancipation: nothing is conquered unless
_deserved_. The poor working men _have_ deserved; they have for one
century fought, bled, acted for _all_ the good causes in Europe: the
majority of your women still fight almost entirely for a husband to be
won by their personal genuine or artificial appearance; they worship
_fashion_ more than the Ideal. You ought to write one tract to men and
one to them.
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] This is inaccurate. See Linaker, _Vita di Enrico Mayer_, I.
124-125.
[48] From Byron's Journal.
[49] See above, p. 168.
[50] Query. The word was illegible in the original.
[51] See above, p. 186.
[52] A favourite expression of Mazzini, as the equivalent of
_quaggiù_.
[53] The Gladstone Ministry of December 1868.
[54] Mrs Stansfeld.
Appendix B
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MAZZINI'S WRITINGS.
[The following is a list of the materials, which (with few exceptions)
have been used in compiling this volume. It is, I believe, a complete
list of writings of any importance by or concerning Mazzini, except
some, which contain purely political references. For some of the minor
references I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Signor
Canestrelli's bibliography, published with his translation of von
Schack's _Giuseppe Mazzini e l'unità italiana_ (Rome, 1892).]
WRITINGS.
The bulk of Mazzini's writings have been collected in _Scritti editi e
inediti di Giuseppe Mazzini_, 18 vols. (Milan and Rome, 1861-1891).
There is an excellent selection, edited by Madame Mario, as _Scritti
scelti di Giuseppe Mazzini_ (Florence, 1901).
A good many of Mazzini's less important journalistic articles have not
been included in the _Scritti editi e inediti_. There are several more
notable omissions:--
_Una notte di Rimini_, said to be Mazzini's first strictly political
writing, republished in Madame Mario's life.
_Due adunanze degli accademici pitagorici_, and _Di Vittor Hugo e
dell'Angelo tiranno_, published in _Il Subalpino_, 1839, and reprinted
in Donaver, _Vita di G. Mazzini_.
_Byron e Goethe_ (very important for Mazzini's literary views),
published in _Scritti letterari d'un italiano vivente_ (Lugano, 1847),
republished in Madame Mario's _Scritti scelti_, and badly translated
in the _Life and Writings_, vol. ii.
_Sulla pittura in Italia_, published in _Scritti letterari_.
_Macchiavelli_, published in ditto.
_Victor Hugo_, published in _British and Foreign Review_, 1838, and
republished in _Life and Writings_, vol. ii.
_Lamartine_, published in _British and Foreign Review_, 1839, and
republished in _Life and Writings_, vol. ii.
_Letters on the state and prospects of Italy_, published in _Monthly
Chronicle_, May-Sept. 1839.
_George Sand_, published in _Monthly Chronicle_, July 1839; extracts
republished in _Life and Writings_, vol. vi.
_Thiers_, published in _Monthly Chronicle_, July 1839.
Review of C. Balbo's _Vita di Dante_, published in _The European_,
Jan. 1840, and translated in A. von Schack, Joseph Mazzini und die
italienische Einheit.
_Italian Art_, published in _Westminster Review_, April 1841. [There
is no direct evidence that this was written by Mazzini, but the
internal evidence is rather strong. I believe that it was translated
into or from the _Révue républicaine_.]
Introduction and notes to Foscolo's edition of the _Divina Commedia_
(see above, p. 94).
_Pensieri sulla storia d'Italia_, published in _l'Educatore_ (London,
1843).
_Sull'educazione_, published in ditto, and republished in
_l'Emancipazione_ (Rome), Oct. 5, 1872.
_A prayer for the planters_, published for the first time in this
volume, pp. 349-352.
_Address of the People's International League_, republished in _Life
and Writings_, vol. vi. (see above, note to p. 303).
Notes for an answer to the Irish Repealers, published in _Scottish
Leader_, July, 1888 (see above, p. 107).
_George Sand_, published in _People's Journal_; extracts republished
in _Life and Writings_, vol. vi.
_Non-intervention_, published as a tract by the "Friends of Italy,"
and republished in _Life and Writings_, vol. vi.
_Rest_, published privately by the Pen and Pencil Club, and
republished in this volume, pp. 363-365.
_Italy and the Republic_, published in _Fortnightly Review_, March 1,
1871.
_The Franco-German War and the Commune_, published in _Contemporary
Review_, April and June, 1871.
[Signor Cagnacci in his _Giuseppe Mazzini e i fratelli Ruffini_
publishes a rhapsodical _Aux jeunes italiens_ and a short poem _Addio
dalle Alpi_, which he believes to be from Mazzini's pen; he gives,
however, no evidence whatever in support of his theory. For Mazzini's
supposed youthful poetry see Donaver, _Uomini e libri_, 77, 119, and
_Vita di G. Mazzini_, 29 n., 431, and Canestrelli's bibliography, pp.
290, 291, 305, 308-9, 311.]
TRANSLATIONS.
The greater portion of the first seven volumes of the _Scritti editi e
inediti_, with some additional matter, was translated into English as
_Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini_, 6 vols. (London, 1870). The
_Duties of Man_ and _Democracy in Europe_ (_alias The Systems and the
Democracy_, the early chapters of which were written originally in
English) have been translated by Madame Venturi and were published by
H. S. King in 1877 and later by Alexander and Shepherd. FROM THE POPE
TO THE COUNCIL (_alias Letter to the Oecumenical Council_) and
_Lamennais_ have been translated by Mme. Venturi. _Faith and the
Future_ and other essays have been translated by Mr T. Okey and
published by Dent. Together with _From the Council to God_, _The
Duties of Man_, and _To the Italian Working-man_, they have been
published by Dent in "Everyman's Library." Various extracts have been
collected by the Bishop of Truro and published by Fisher Unwin. There
is a volume of translations in the Camelot Classics. Several earlier
translations of separate essays have been published.
There are two volumes of a German translation, published by Hoffmann
u. Campe (Hamburg, 1868). _The Duties of Man_ and _Democracy in Europe_
are published in French by Charpentier (Paris, 1881).
JOURNALISM.
Mazzini's papers were--
_La Giovine Italia._ Marseilles and Switzerland. 1832-1836. [Reprinted
in the _Biblioteca storica del risorgimento italiano_.]
_La Jeune Suisse._ Bienne. 1835-1836.
_L'Apostolato Popolare._ London. 1840-1843.
_L'Italia del Popolo._ Milan, 1848; Rome, 1849; Lausanne and Lugano,
1849-1851.
_Pensiero ed Azione._ London. 1858-1860.
_La Roma del Popolo._ Rome. 1870-1872.
He contributed largely to--
_L'Indicatore Genovese._ Genoa. 1828.
_L'Indicatore Livornese._ Leghorn. 1829.
_L'Italiano._ Paris. 1836. [7 articles, signed "E. J."]
_L'Educatore._ London. 1843.
_Italia e Popolo._ Genoa. 1855-1856.
_L'Unità italiana._ Genoa. 1860-1865.
LETTERS.
The following collections have been published:--
_Giuseppe Mazzini e i fratelli Ruffini_, by C. Cagnacci (Porto
Maurizio, 1893). Contains his letters to Madame Ruffini (1837-1841), a
few letters to A. and G. Ruffini, and extracts from his letters to
Elia Benza.
_Lettres intimes de Joseph Mazzini, publiées par D. Melegari_ (Paris,
1895). Contains letters to L. A. Melegari and Madame de Mandrot
(mostly 1836-1843).
_La Giovine Italia e la giovine Europa_ (Milan, 1906). Contains
letters to L. A. Melegari (chiefly 1833).
_Lettere inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini, pubblicate da L. Ordoño de
Rosales_ (Turin, 1898). Contains letters to Gaspare de Rosales (mostly
1834-1836).
_Duecento lettere inedite di Giuseppe Mazzini con proemio e note di D.
Giuriati_ (Turin, 1887). Contains letters to G. Lamberti (mostly
1837-1844).
_Lettere di G. Mazzini ad A. Giannelli_ (Prato and Pistoia, 1888-1892)
(letters of 1859-1870).
_Lettres de Joseph Mazzini à Daniel Stern_ [Vicomtesse d'Agoult]
(Paris, 1873) (letters of 1864-1872).
_Corrispondenza inedita di Giuseppe Mazzini con ..._ (Milan, 1872).
[This is the correspondence in 1863-1864 with Signor Diamilla-Müller,
who was the intermediary between Mazzini and Victor Emmanuel. It has
been republished in _Politica segreta italiana_ (Turin, 1880).]
A very imperfect collection of Mazzini's correspondence is now being
published under the editorship of Signor Ernesto Nathan, as
_Epistolario di Giuseppe Mazzini_ (Florence, 1902). Two volumes only
have as yet appeared; their most important feature is Mazzini's
correspondence with his mother.
Many letters are also published in the introductions to Mazzini's
_Scritti editi e inediti_ and in Madame Mario's _Della Vito di G.
Mazzini_ and _Scritti scelti_; also in Linaker, _La vita e i tempi di
E. Mayer_ (Florence, 1898) [letters to E. Mayer]; _Nuova Antologia_,
Dec. 1, 1884 [letters to Madame Magiotti and E. Mayer]; _Ib._, May 1
and 16, 1890 [letters to F. Le Monnier]; _Ib._, May 1, 1907; Del Cerro
(_pseud._), _Un amore di G. Mazzini_ (Milan, 1895) [correspondence
with Giuditta Sidoli; see above, p. 51]; _Rivista d'Italia_, April,
1902 [letters to N. Fabrizi and others]. Scattered letters may be
found in Ramorino, _Précis des derniers événemens de Savoie_ (Paris,
1834); _Daily News_, 1853 [see above, p. 169]; Orsini, _Memoirs_
(Edinburgh, 1857); _Il risorgimento italiano_, Feb. 11, 1860; _L'Unità
italiana_, Jan. 15 and 21 and June 3, 1861; _Roma e Venezia_, Jan. 15,
1861; Cironi, _La stampa nazionale italiana_ (Prato, 1862); _Lettere
edite ed inedite di F. Orsini, G. Mazzini_, etc. (Milan, 1862); _The
Shield_, Oct. 1, 1870; Uberti, _Poesie_ (Milan, 1871); Moncure Conway,
_Mazzini_ (London, 1872); _La Gazzetta di Milano_, Jan. 22, 1872;
_L'Emancipazione_ (Rome), Jan. 24, 1874; La Cecilia, _Memorie
storico-politiche_ (Rome, 1876); De Monte, _Cronaca del comitato
segreto di Napoli_ (Naples, 1877); _Quattro lettere a P. Mazzoleni_
(Imola, 1881); _Lettera a Filippo Ugoni_ (Rovigo, 1887); Donaver,
_Uomini e libri_ (Genoa, 1888); Carbonelli, _Niccola Mignona_ (Naples,
1889); _Fanfulla della Domenica_, April 21 and 28 and May 12, 1889;
_Rassegna nazionale_, Oct. 1, 1890; _Rivista della massoneria
italiana_, 1890-1891 and 1891-2; _The Century_, Nov. 1891; _Lettere
inedite di G. Mazzini a N. Andreini_ (Imola, 1897); _Rivista storica
del risorgimento italiano_, 1897 and 1900; Saffi, _Ricordi e scritti_,
vol. iii. (Florence, 1898); _Giornale d'Italia_, March 23 and April
10, 1902; Lumbroso, _Scaramucce_, pp. 247, 288; Del Cerro in _Rivista
Moderna_, 1902; _Secolo_, Aug. 13, 1902; Donaver, _Vita di G. Mazzini_
(Florence, 1903); _Corriere della sera_, Aug. 9, 1903, and Aug. 9,
1909; Card. Capecelatro, _Vita della serva di Dio, Paola Frassinetti_;
Mrs Fletcher's _Autobiography_; Froude, _Carlyle's Life in London_;
Ireland, _Jane Welsh Carlyle_; Duncombe's _Life and Correspondence_;
De Amicis, _Cuore_ (pages 222 of Ed. 8); Quinet, _Oeuvres
completes_, xi. 32, 423; Luzio, _G. Mazzini_ (Milan, 1905); Gianelli,
_Brevi ricordi Mazziniani_ (Florence, 1905); Essays of Mazzini,
translated by T. Okey; Parliamentary Papers, Correspondence affecting
affairs of Italy, 1846-1849, i. 223 (probably genuine).
I have also been able to see some 350 unpublished letters,--to Mr and
Mrs Peter Taylor (of the greatest value for Mazzini's public and
private life); Mr William Shaen (a large and important collection);
Mrs Milner-Gibson; Mr W. Malleson; Mr W. E. Hickson (when editor of
the _Westminster Review_); Mr Peter Stuart; and Miss Galeer.
BIOGRAPHIES.
Mazzini's autobiographical notes in the earlier volumes of the
_Scritti editi e inediti_ are of course of the highest value. The
completest life is Mario, _Della vita di Giuseppe Mazzini_ (Milan,
1886), containing a mass of valuable material, but partial and
including much extraneous matter. There is a much better study of
Mazzini's early life, prefixed to the same authoress' _Scritti
scelti_. Saffi's introductions to several volumes of the _Scritti
editie e inediti_ are most valuable. Donaver's _Vita di G. Mazzini_ is
useful, especially for the earlier period. There is a short memoir by
Madame Venturi (_née_ Miss Ashurst) prefixed to the English
translation of the Duties of Man. I have seen no other biographies of
any value.
NOTICES AND STUDIES.
There is a life-like portrait of Mazzini and much information about
his early life in G. Ruffini, _Lorenzo Benoni_ (Edinburgh, 1853); a
valuable sketch, largely based on conversations with Madame Mazzini,
by Mr William Shaen in _The Public Good_, 1851; and some useful
information in Donaver, _Uomini e libri_. There are studies of more or
less value in Cantimori, _Saggio sull'idealismo di G. Mazzini_
(Faenza, 1904); Linaker, _La Vita italiana nel risorgimento_
(Florence, 1899); Nencioni, _Saggi critici di letteratura italiana_
(Florence, 1898); Oxilia, _Giuseppe Mazzini, uomo e letterato_
(Florence, 1902); F. Myers in _Fortnightly Review_, 1878; De Sanctis,
_La letteratura italiana nel secola XIX._ (Naples, 1902); D'Ancona e
Bacci, _Manuale della lettaratura italiana_, vol. v. (Florence,
1901); _Mazzini: Conferenze tenute in Genova_ (Genova, 1906). There are
valuable analyses of Mazzini's economic position in Bozzino, _Il
socialismo e la dottrina sociale di Mazzini_ (Genoa, 1895), and
Bertacchi, _Il pensiero sociale di Giuseppe Mazzini_ (Milan, 1900).
Hostile studies in Bianchi, _Vicende del Mazzinianismo_ (Savona, 1854)
and Grüber, _Massoneria e Rivoluzione_ (Rome, 1901), the latter of
small value.
There are notices in Mrs Carlyle's _Letters and Memorials_; Carlyle's
_Reminiscences_; Froude, _Carlyle's Life in London_; _Correspondence
of Carlyle and Emerson_; Mrs Fletcher's _Autobiography_; W. J. Linton,
_European Republicans_ and _Memories_; T. S. Cooper, _Autobiography_;
Gabriel Rossetti, _Versified Autobiography_; Clough, _Prose Remains
and Amours de Voyage_; Margaret Fuller Ossoli, _Memoirs_; Fagan, _Life
of Panizzi_; Gustavo Modena, _Epistolario_ (Rome, 1888); Giurati,
_Memorie d'emigrazione_ (Milan, 1897); Badii, _Antologia Mazziniana_
(Pitigliano, 1898); _Pensiero ed azione nel risorgimento italiano_
(Città di Castello, 1898); Faldella, _I fratelli Ruffini_ (Turin,
1900); Lumbroso, _Scaramucce e Avvisaglie_ (Frascati, 1902); Cironi in
_Il Bruscolo_, March 9, 1902; Tracts of the Society of the Friends of
Italy; Saffi, _Ricordi e scritti_, vol. iii.; Felix Moscheles,
_Fragments of an Autobiography_; articles by Matilde Blind in
_Fortnightly_, May, 1891; articles by Karl Blind in _Fraser's_,
August-September, 1882; article by Professor Masson in _Macmillan's_,
1871; article by Madame Venturi in _The Century_, November, 1891; the
privately published Life of Miss Catherine Winkworth; Jowett's
Letters; letter by C. E. Maurice to _The Spectator_, March 6, 1872;
Barbiera, _Figure e figurine_ (Milan, 1899) and _Memorie di un
editore_; Lloyd Garrison's introduction to his edition of some of
Mazzini's Essays; T. S. Cooper, _A Paradise of Martyrs_; G. J.
Holyoake, _Bygones_; Caroline Fox, _Memories_; Madame Adams,
_Memoirs_; De Lesseps, _Ma Mission à Rome_; Rusconi, _Repubblica
Romana_; Diamilla-Müller, _Roma e Venezia_; Stillman, _Union of
Italy_; Zini, _Storia d'Italia_, Documenti I.
Index
Action, need of, 156, 257, 259, 318, 353, 363-365.
Aeschylus, 9, 10, 259, 324.
Alps, love of, 19, 52, 116, 329.
America, friends in, 105, 106, 170, 171;
on policy of, 171, 198, 199, 280, 309.
Amnesty, 179, 201, 209, 217, 367.
_Antologia_, writes in the, 14.
"Art for the sake of Art," 147, 314.
Ashursts, 88, 106, 124, 144, 152, 184, 372.
Asia, Europe and, 309.
Aspromonte, 201, 202.
Assassination, charges of promoting, 48, 104, 164-167, 197;
attempts to assassinate Mazzini, 142, 170.
Association, theory of, 270-272, 281, 295, 296.
Astronomy, interest in, 330, 362.
Authority, need of, 247, 248, 265.
Bakounine, Michel, relations with, 209, 219, 274, 283.
Bandiera, Attilio and Emilio, 103.
Beethoven, 322, 323.
Belgium, future of, 308.
Bentham, see _Utilitarians_.
Bertani, Agostino, 136, 185-187, 220.
Birds, love of, 15, 146, 185, 356.
Bismarck, relations with, 206, 215.
Blanc, Louis, 163, 287.
Browning, Robert and Mrs, 145, 150, 327.
Buonarrotti, Michelangelo, 41, 50.
Byron, 9, 20, 108, 140, 149, 150, 216, 316, 317, 326, 327, 352,
359, 360.
Carbonari, 2, 15-19, 22-24, 29, 35, 41.
Carlyles, friendship with, 78, 84-88, 93, 104, 141, 144, 146, 339;
criticism of Thomas Carlyle, 84, 243, 249.
Catholicism, attitude towards, 98, 111, 112, 127, 131, 132, 181,
192, 226, 227, 245, 246.
Cavour, Camillo, 25, 160-162, 165, 172, 173, 177-179, 183-187.
Charles Albert, 42, 43, 46, 47, 100, 110, 115, 119, 121, 123, 124;
letter to, 43-45, 348.
Chartists, 82, 83, 93, 283, 286.
Christianity, attitude towards, 8, 59, 127, 220, 225-233, 246,
253, 262, 263, 266, 350.
Christian Socialists, 233.
Church, need of a, 246;
relations to the State, 246, 247, 278, 279.
Clergy, attitude towards, 130, 131.
Clough, Arthur Hugh, 129, 133, 148.
Collectivists, criticism of, 219, 287-290.
Conscience (consciousness), a criterion of truth, 240-242, 362.
Constantinople, future of, 309.
Contemplation, selfishness of, 258.
Cooperative Societies, scheme of, 194, 218, 293-295.
Council of best and wisest, 247, 248, 310, 311.
Cremer, W. Randal, 219.
Crimean War, criticism of, 151, 152, 172.
Crispi, Francesco, 173, 187, 205.
Criticism, theory of literary, 312-314.
_Daily News_, 153, 169.
Dante, 8, 9, 20, 74, 93, 101, 127, 197, 299, 317, 324.
Darwinism, relation to, 236, 330.
Death, must be faced for duty, 260.
Deism, criticism of, 235.
Democracy, attitude towards, 274, 276-278;
and poetry, 316, 319, 320.
Denmark, future of, 308.
De Vigny, Alfred Victor, 9, 65.
Disraeli, Benjamin, 108, 197.
Dogma, importance of, 233, 234.
Donizetti, 322.
Drama, love of historical, 11, 320, 321.
Dudevant, Madame de (see _George Sand_).
Duncombe, Thomas, 104.
Duty, theory of, 26, 56, 57, 256-266, 290, 296, 362, 364.
Economic Principles, 254, 285, 286, 292, 330, 331.
Education, theories of, 265, 270, 272-275, 361-363.
England, love for, 83, 140;
life and politics of, 82, 83, 150-152, 197, 198, 210, 219, 280,
332;
foreign policy of, 105, 304, 305, 309, 310, 365;
studies in literature of, 9, 149, 150;
help from for Italy, 106, 152, 153, 193, 194
(see _London_).
Ethics, insufficient without religion, 224, 250;
theories of, 249-263;
sanction of, 263.
Europe, solidarity of, 302, 303, 309, 310;
future of, 307-309
(see _Young Europe_).
Family life, remarks on, 65, 66, 72, 264-266.
Fanti, Manfredo, 49, 118, 123, 187.
Federalists (see _Italian Unity_).
Fenians, 199, 200.
Fletcher, Mrs Archibald, 83.
Florence, visits to, 126, 179-182, 186, 220.
Foreign policy, ethics of, 302-306.
Foscolo, Ugo, 3, 9, 12, 64, 93-95, 101, 108, 220.
France, policy of, 1830, 22, 35;
ditto at Rome (1849), 134, 135;
ditto in 1867, 212;
the Third Republic in, 220;
Mazzini's dislike of, 60, 134, 163, 220;
as a nationality, 298, 300, 307;
character of, 307
(see _Napoleon_).
"Free Church in a Free State," 247.
Freemason, not a, 213.
French Revolution, criticism of, 59, 232, 250.
Friendly Societies, 212, 218.
"Friends of Italy," 152, 153.
Fuller-Ossoli, Margaret, 86, 88, 129, 132, 138.
Gaeta, imprisonment at, 216, 217.
Gallenga, Antonio, 166.
Garibaldi, Giuseppe, 41, 118, 124;
at Rome (1849), 134, 136, 137;
in 1859, 181, 182;
and Sicily, 173, 184-186, 355;
wants to march to Rome, 187, 188;
Mazzini's relations with (1861-1867), 200, 201, 203, 204, 212,
220;
in England, 203, 204;
policy in 1867, 211, 212.
Garrison, William Lloyd, 195, 210.
Gaskell, Mrs, 7, 145.
Geneva, life at and visits to, 19, 48, 138-140.
Genius, theory of, 241, 242, 331.
Genoa, early life at, 1-4, 13, 15;
politics at, 39, 40, 42, 46, 47, 50, 65;
visits to, 171, 173-175, 185, 210, 213, 214, 217, 220;
buried at, 221.
Geography, interest in, 299, 330, 363;
as a basis of nationality, 299.
"George Sand," 90-92.
Germany, future of, 215, 307;
character of, 306;
attitude towards alliance with, 205, 214;
dislike of German professors, 275;
German music, 322.
Gioberti, Vincenzo, 41, 61, 96, 101, 127.
God, belief in, 80, 234-236, 250.
Goethe, 9, 13, 324-326, 364.
Government, theory of, 247, 275, 278, 279.
Graham, Sir James, 104.
Greco, Pasquale, 166, 197, 198.
Greece, future of, 308, 309.
Greville Street, school in, 98, 142.
Guerilla fighting, 33.
Guerrazzi, Francesco Domenico, 9, 13, 14, 65, 114, 126.
Happiness, not an end of life, 255, 256, 364;
dislike of, 339.
Hegel, 10, 275.
Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 10, 242.
Herzen, Alexander, 204.
History, theories of, 331, 350.
Holland, future of, 308.
Hugo, Victor, 9, 315, 321.
Humanity, theory of, 231, 236, 242, 243, 261, 297.
Hungary, hopes of rising in, 158, 177, 193;
future of, 309.
Ideals, necessity of, 239, 240, 249, 250, 288.
Immortality, belief in personal, 80, 144, 237, 238, 357, 358, 364.
Individualism, 272, 327.
Insurrection, policy of, 33, 45, 48-50, 61, 102, 103, 125, 157,
158, 168, 193, 218, 349.
International, The, attack on, 219.
Intuition, 240-242, 244, 245, 277, 330, 351.
Irish Question, remarks on, 107, 199, 200.
Italy, condition of in 1830, 20-22;
politics in 1845-47, 100-103;
events of 1848-49 in, 114-125, 128;
politics in (1850-1858), 154-164;
politics in (1859-1860), 177-188;
condition of after 1860, 191, 192;
war of 1866, 205-207;
Republican movement in, 209;
Mazzini's belief in mission of, 26, 60, 126-128, 192, 248, 295,
307, 310, 311, 322.
Italian Unity, popular demand for, 20, 21, 31, 121;
Mazzini's advocacy of, 31, 32, 111, 117, 155, 180, 181, 192, 211;
how far his work, 32, 154, 336.
Jowett, Benjamin, 145, 147, 148, 273.
Kossuth, Louis, 153, 169, 170-1.
Lamartine, Alphonse, 318.
Lamennais, 59, 89, 90, 93, 250.
Landor, Walter Savage, 153, 165.
Lausanne, visits to, 52, 70, 138, 140.
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre, 146, 171, 199.
Left, Parliamentary, 205, 209, 212.
Leghorn, 13, 40, 114, 126, 217.
Lesseps, Ferdinand de, 135.
Liberty, theory of, 269, 270, 272, 273, 278, 351.
Lincoln, President, 196, 199.
Linton, W. J., 88, 106, 153.
Literature, principles of, 11, 12, 312-321;
as a basis of nationality, 299;
Mazzini's literary work, 13, 14, 39, 64, 65, 92-94, 108, 109,
139, 149, 196, 197, 213, 312, 329, 330.
Local Government, theories of, 194, 307.
London, life in, 73-98, 140-148, 195, 196, 210;
feelings about, 73, 74, 78, 140, 141.
Lugano, 65, 125, 126, 182, 184, 202, 204, 210, 213.
Malleson, Mr and Mrs W., 144, 198, 361-363, 371.
Mameli, Goffredo, 66, 136, 137.
Mandrot, Madeleine de, 70-72.
Manin, Daniele, 163, 164, 166.
Manzoni, Alessandro, 9, 11, 12, 101.
Marseilles, life at, 36-38, 47, 48;
visit to, 138.
Marx, Karl, see _Collectivists_.
Materialism, attacks on, 59, 224, 285, 288.
Mazzini, Antonia (sister), 220.
Mazzini, Francesca (sister), 80, 81.
Mazzini, Giacomo (father), 1, 58, 76, 81, 144.
Mazzini, Giuseppe, childhood and youth, 1-7;
early literary studies and writings, 8-11;
life in 1827-30, 14, 15, 344, 345;
Joins the Carbonari, 15-18;
imprisoned and exiled, 18, 19;
founds Young Italy, 24-34, 36-41, 345;
at Marseilles, 36-38, 47, 48, 345, 346;
plans a rising in Piedmont, 42, 45-47;
letter to Charles Albert, 42-45, 348;
at Geneva, 48;
Savoy raid, 48-50, 346;
life in Switzerland, 50-56;
mental crisis, 55-57;
political schemes (1834-36), 58-61;
founds Young Switzerland, 62, 63;
and Young Europe, 63, 64;
literary work (1834-36), 64, 65;
his women friends and love, 65-72;
life in London (1837-47), 73-89, 97, 98, 103-109;
literary work (1837-47), 92-94, 109;
political work (1839-45), 95-99, 102, 103;
school for Italian boys, 97, 98, 142;
relations with the Bandieras, 103;
letters opened in English Post-Office, 103-105;
founds People's International League, 106;
attitude towards Moderates, 29, 110, 111, 113, 114, 120;
policy in 1847, 110-114;
at Milan, 116-120, 123;
preaches the People's War, 125;
at Florence, 126;
Triumvir at Rome, 126-138;
in Switzerland, 139, 140;
life in England (1850-1859), 140-148;
literary work (1849-59), 139, 149;
founds Society of Friends of Italy, 152, 153;
attempts to assassinate, 142, 170;
political work (1850-57), 154-164, 167-177, 350-356;
attitude towards Cavour, 160-162, 172, 173, 176, 183;
attitude towards Napoleon III., 140, 162, 163, 177, 179, 190,
193, 199;
Genoese plot of 1857, 174, 175;
policy in 1858-59, 176-182;
policy in 1860, 183-188, 359, 360;
policy in 1861-66, 189-194, 200-207;
disappointment in Italy, 191;
life in England (1860-66), 195-200;
Greco plot, 197, 198;
attitude towards Garibaldi, 200, 201;
intrigue with Victor Emmanuel, 202-204;
meets Garibaldi in England, 203, 204;
failing health, 195, 210;
elected deputy for Messina, 209;
organises Republican Alliance, 211-214;
writes _From the Council to God_, 213, 218;
intrigues with Bismarck, 215;
imprisoned at Gaeta, 216, 217;
policy after 1870, 218;
attacks the International, 219, 220;
illness and death, 220, 221.
---- religious theories, 222-248, see _Catholicism_,
_Christianity_, _Church_, _God_, _Immortality_, _Materialism_,
_Mysticism_, _Pantheism_, _Protestantism_, _Providence_,
_Religion_;
his own religion, 4, 8, 25, 57, 80, 148, 229, 230, 248, 334,
335, 362;
desire to be a religious reformer, 248, 334, 335;
value as a thinker, 222, 330-332, see _Conscience_, _Darwinism_,
_Dogma_, _Genius_, _Humanity_, _Philosophy_, _Progress_,
_Science_, _Tradition_, _Unity_, _Utopias_;
ethical theories, 249-266, see _Duty_, _Happiness_, _Ideals_,
_Intuition_, _Moral law_, _Personal morality_, _Pietism_,
_Rights_, _Utilitarianism_;
value as a moral teacher, 332-334;
political theories, 267-282, see _Association_, _Democracy_,
_Foreign policy_, _Government_, _Individualism_, _Liberty_,
_Patriotism_, _Republicanism_, _Sovereignty_, _Spiritual
Power_, _State_, _Universal Suffrage_, _War_;
position as a politician, 335-337;
theories of education, 265, 270, 272-275, 361-363;
social theories, 283-295, see _Collectivists_, _Cooperative
Societies_, _Economic principles_, _Nationalisation_,
_Property_, _Taxation_, _Social Reform_, _Socialism_;
theory of Nationality, 296-311;
literary theories, 11, 12, 312-328, see _Byron_, _Dante_,
_Drama_, _History_, _Poetry_, _Romanticism_;
writings, 13, 14, 39, 64, 65, 92-94, 108, 109, 139, 149, 196,
197, 213, 312, 329, 330;
theories of music, 321-323, 350.
---- personal appearance, 6, 36, 37, 143, 210;
character, 6, 7, 57, 79-81, 109, 148, 210, 337-341;
sense of mission, 58, 96, 333;
impulse to action, 156, 259, 318, 353, 363-365;
tendency to unhappiness, 55-58, 78-80, 339, 340;
poetic temperament, 329, 330;
love of system-making, 28, 29;
dislike of compromise, 110, 111, 156, 190, 333;
charity, 97, 142, 216;
tolerance, 129-131, 338;
love of nature, 19, 52, 116, 141, 210, 216, 329;
love of children, 146;
love of birds, 15, 146, 185, 356;
interest in women's questions, 65, 91, 219, 265, 278, 365, 366;
love of family life, 65, 66, 72, 264-266;
as a conversationalist, 147;
as a public speaker, 106, 153;
money affairs, 53, 76, 77, 108, 109, 141, 142, 196.
---- belief in Italy and Rome, 26, 60, 126-128, 192, 295, 307,
310, 311, 312;
advocacy of Italian Unity, see _Italian Unity_;
interest in working classes, see _Working Classes_;
views as to assassination, see _Assassination_.
Mazzini, Maria Drago (mother), 1, 53, 58, 67, 81, 108, 144, 162,
340.
Mentana, 212.
Messina, elected deputy for, 209.
Mexico, Napoleon's schemes in, 199.
Meyerbeer, 147, 322.
Mickiewicz, 10, 140.
Middle classes, appeals to, 27, 99;
deserted by, 109, 157, 170;
social reform and, 290.
Milan, 114-120, 123, 124, 168, 169, 214.
Milner-Gibson, Mrs, 106, 144, 357, 371.
Modena, Gustavo and Giulia, 40, 138.
Moderates, attitude towards, 101, 102, 110, 111, 113, 118-120, 125;
see _Piedmontese Party_.
Monarchy, attitude towards, 30, 120, 155, 180, 181, 194, 208, 211,
279, 280.
Moral Law, supremacy of, 249, 267, 285, 300.
Music, love of, 6, 133, 145-147;
theories of, 321-323, 350.
Mysticism, interest in, 197, 236.
Naples, visits to, 187, 188, 216.
Napoleon, Louis (afterwards Napoleon III.), 40, 134, 135, 140, 161,
162, 176-183, 186, 190, 197, 201, 206, 287.
Nathan, Giuseppe and Sarah, 210.
Nationalisation, projects of, 131, 194, 293.
Nationality, moral basis of, 296, 297, 302;
marks of, 298-301;
national missions, 107, 306, 307;
should be large, 198, 307.
Non-intervention, attack on, 151, 304, 305, 360.
Odger, George, 219.
Orsini, Felice, 165, 167.
Pallavicino Trivulzio, Marquis Giorgio, 188.
Palmerston, Viscount, 105, 203.
Panizzi, Antonio, 89.
Pantheism, criticism of, 235.
Papacy, see _Catholicism_.
Patriotism, 232, 265, 267, 301, 302.
People's International League, 106.
People's War, 125.
Personal morality, preaches, 264, 286, 338;
dependant on environment, 267, 268;
essential to patriotism, 301.
Philosophy, studies in, 10;
insufficient without religion, 224, 225.
Piedmont, army plot in, 42, 45-47.
Piedmontese party, 154-156, 159-161, 173.
Pietism, criticism of, 257, 258.
Pilo, Rosalino, 184.
Pisa, death at, 221.
Pisacane, Carlo (Duke di San Giovanni), 136, 139, 174.
Pius IX., 110-112, 114;
Mazzini's letter to, 111, 112.
Plombières, agreement of, 177, 179.
Poetry, theories of, 313-321, 324, 352, 353, 361;
Mazzini's, 329, 330, 369.
Poland, plans to assist, 193, 194, 202;
literature of, 10, 327;
future of, 306, 308, 309.
Post-Office scandal, 103-105;
see 197.
Progress, theory of, 236-239, 257, 362.
Property, rights of, 270, 291.
Protestantism, attitude towards, 150, 152, 227, 240, 244.
Providence, belief in, 125, 233, 235-237, 239, 257, 285, 288, 296,
299, 350.
Race as an element of nationality, 298.
Ramorino, General, 49, 50.
Rattazzi, Urbano, 201, 211, 212.
Realism in literature, 314-315, 361, 364.
Reclamation of waste lands, 292, 293.
Religion, Mazzini's, 4, 8, 25, 57, 80, 148, 229, 230, 248, 334,
335, 362;
essential to society, 222-225, 288;
in politics, 26, 60, 223, 224, 240;
projected book on, 11, 139, 140, 149.
Renan, criticism of, 220, 235.
Republicanism, advocacy of, 30, 31, 44, 60, 61, 111, 113, 117-120,
125, 126, 155, 164, 167, 180, 186, 194, 208, 209, 211, 365;
theory of, 30, 279-281.
Ricasoli, Baron Bettino, 179, 180, 182, 187, 201, 206, 211.
Rights, attack on theory of, 59, 250-256.
Romanticism, criticism of, 9, 12, 13, 320.
Rome, faith in, 126-128, 311;
in 1848, 121, 125, 126;
republic at, 128-138;
policy respecting (1860-1870), 187, 192, 193, 205, 211-213;
passes through in 1870, 217.
Rosselli, Pellegrino and Janet Nathan, 217, 221.
Rossetti, Gabriele, 89.
Rossini, criticism of, 147, 322.
Roumania, future of, 309.
Ruffini, Agostino, 7, 65, 73, 75, 76, 78.
---- Marchesa Eleonora Curlo, 8, 15, 56, 67, 68, 80-82, 370.
---- Giovanni, 7, 8, 73, 75, 76, 78.
---- Jacopo, 7, 39, 47, 56, 80, 96.
Russia, foreign policy of, 306, 308, 309.
Saffi, Count Aurelio, 139, 141.
Savona, imprisonment at, 18.
Savoy, views on, 42, 308;
projected raid into, 49, 50;
cession of, 183.
Scandinavia, future of, 308.
Schiller, 9, 320, 321, 324, 364.
Science, views on, 330.
Secret societies, 33, 34.
Seely, Charles, 203, 204.
September Convention, 204, 205.
Shaen, William and Mrs, 37, 88, 106, 144, 147, 152, 349, 366, 371,
372.
Shakespeare, 9, 317, 324, 325, 357.
Sicily, plans for revolutionising, 170, 173, 181, 183, 186.
Sidoli, Giuditta, 48, 55, 68-71, 126, 171, 191, 220, 371.
Slavery, views on, 198, 349-352.
Slavs, literature of, 10, 299, 308, 327;
future of, 149, 308, 309.
Social reform, advocacy of, 27, 28, 99, 132, 220, 232, 254,
283-285, 350;
plans of, 194, 289-295.
Socialism, criticism of, 99, 271, 287-289, 291, 295.
Sovereignty, theory of, 275, 276.
Spain, future of, 308.
Spinoza, criticism of, 235.
Spiritual power, theories of the, 246-248, 278, 279.
Spiritualism, aversion to, 197.
Stansfeld, Sir James and Mrs, 88, 106, 144, 145, 152, 195, 197,
210, 218, 366.
State, the, moral basis of, 267, 268, 275, 276;
duties of, 269-275;
ideal form of, 281, 282;
relations to the church, 246, 247, 278, 279.
Swinburne, Algernon C., 145, 217.
Switzerland, life in, 51-56, 63;
politics of, 62, 308;
see _Geneva_, _Lausanne_, _Lugano_.
Taine, Hippolyte, 217.
Taxation, principles of, 293.
Taylor, Peter and Mrs, 88, 106, 144, 152, 352-357, 359-361, 365,
371.
Theory of dagger, the, see _Assassination_.
_Times, The_, 104, 153, 164-166.
Toynbee, Joseph, 88, 98.
Tradition: a criterion of truth, 242-244, 362.
Tyrol, 206, 208, 308.
Umbria, projected attacks on, 181, 186.
Unity of life, 8, 236, 245, 350;
of belief, 245, 246, 273, 274.
Universal suffrage, 277, 278.
Utilitarianism, criticism of, 251-256, 362.
Utopias, condemns, 243, 289.
Venice, plans to free, 187, 188, 192, 193, 200.
Vico, 10, 242.
Victor Emmanuel II., attitude towards, 162, 165, 166, 180, 181,
186, 188;
intrigue with, 202-204.
Wagner, Richard, anticipates, 323.
War, views on, 33, 151, 305, 306.
Werner, 65.
Women's questions, interest in, 65, 91, 219, 265, 278, 365, 366.
Wordsworth, 9, 150, 235, 237, 315, 318.
Working classes, belief in, 27, 28, 41, 97-99, 157, 158, 213,
285, 366;
sympathy for, 268, 283, 284;
moral interests of, 285-287.
Young Europe, 46, 63, 64.
Young Italy, first mention of, 13;
principles of, 24-34, 165;
foundation of, 36-41;
subsequent history of, 54, 95-99, 109;
results of, 100.
Young Switzerland, 62, 63.
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