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Sir Thomas More and His Daughter (Photogravure)

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Barthold Georg Niebuhr (Portrait, Photogravure)

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Don Quixote Consults the Enchanted Head (Photogravure) 3184 Jean Paul Friedrich Richter (Portrait, Photogravure)

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GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

(1805-1872)

IUSEPPE MAZZINI was one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century, and though his work as the creator of United Italy has overshadowed his achievement as a writer, there is no question but that his writings alone would have perpetuated his memory, were they the sole monument of his extraordinary genius. It is true, however, and it must not be forgotten in connection with them, that his essays, and indeed whatever else he has written, are incidents of the moral force and intellectual activity which made him one of the great agencies in compelling the progress of Europe in spite of the strong reactionary tendencies of the second half of the nineteenth century. A man of action whose whole life was that of the leaven which disturbs while it renovates the lump, he wrote not for the sake of artistic expression, but rather to express what he conceived to be the purposes of a broader humanity and a higher civilization.

He was born at Genoa in June, 1805. His father, Giacomo Mazzini, a reputable physician of that city, was able to give him a university education, and in 1826 Mazzini graduated in law after having completed his course in literature. He joined the Carbonari society at an early age, but became dissatisfied with its methods and was on the point of organizing a new association when he was arrested (1830) and imprisoned for six months in the fortress of Savona. There he conceived what he called his "Apostolate," and on his release he began the serious work of his life,-nothing less than the enfranchisement of Italy and Europe. He purposed to organize the young men of Italy and other European countries to check centralization and to substitute self-governing republics of free people for the great military empires which were then beginning to threaten. Taking refuge at Marseilles, and when driven from Marseilles working from Geneva and London, he organized the "Young Europe Association" of 1834, and was largely instrumental in organizing the movement of 1847 and 1848, which resulted in the German Revolution. As a result of this movement, during which the Roman republic of 1849 collapsed almost immediately after it was proclaimed, he spent much of his life not merely an exile, but a hunted exile, with a sentence of death hanging over his head. He continued his agitation until, with the help of Garibaldi and Cavour, Italian unity had been secured; but

unity at the expense of monarchy, Mazzini would not accept. When the monarchy was proclaimed he declared that he sorrowfully recognized the national will; "but monarchy," he added, "will never number me among its servants or followers." He refused to take office when elected to the Italian parliament, and when a pardon was decreed for him he refused to be thus relieved from the sentence of death which had been decreed against him "for having loved Italy above all earthly things." He returned to Geneva and resumed the work of organizing the most daring among European Liberals into societies for the support of republican institutions, and in 1869 the Italian government rewarded his services by securing his expulsion from Switzerland. After visiting England he landed in Sicily and was imprisoned for several months. After his release his activity was cut short by failing health, and he died at Pisa, March 10th, 1872. Much of his best prose was written and published in London, but English literature has no claim upon it. It belongs to Italy which alone could have produced Mazzini. He had the spirit of Dante, softened and made more nearly divine by love. The "cruel indignation"> against wrong, which tortured Dante, ceased to be a fire in the soul of Mazzini and became light, making his whole life incandescent with love of liberty and humanity. The nineteenth century produced no loftier character. He was in the old Hebrew sense a prophet, not the mere soothsayer who predicts events, but the maker of destiny who prophesies for (that is speaks for) those who cannot speak for themselves. "Whom shall I send?" God said to Isaiah when the

cause of progress and civilization seemed lost. And when the same call came to Mazzini in the nineteenth century which came to Isaiah "in the year that King Uzziah died," the Italian prophet answered as the Hebrew prophet had answered before him, "Send me!"

W. V. B.

ON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

DEAS rule the world and its events. A revolution is the passage of an idea from theory to practice. Whatever men have said, material interests never have caused, and never will cause, a revolution. Extreme poverty, financial ruin, oppressive or unequal taxation, may provoke risings that are more or less threatening or violent, but nothing more. Revolutions have their origin in the mind, in the very root of life; not in the body, in the material organism. A religion or a philosophy lies at the base of every revolution. This is a truth that can be proved from the whole historical tradition of humanity.