TO MAZZINI.
"Al Cittadino Reppresentante del Popolo Romano."
Rome, March 8, 1849.
Dear Mazzini: Though knowing you occupied by the most important affairs, I again feel impelled to write a few lines. What emboldens me is the persuasion that the best friends, in point of sympathy and intelligence,—the only friends of a man of ideas and of marked character,—must be women. You have your mother; no doubt you have others, perhaps many. Of that I know nothing; only I like to offer also my tribute of affection.
When I think that only two years ago you thought of coming into Italy with us in disguise, it seems very glorious that you are about to enter republican Rome as a Roman citizen. It seems almost the most sublime and poetical fact of history. Yet, even in the first thrill of joy, I felt "he will think his work but beginning, now."
When I read from your hand these words, "II lungo esilio testè ricominciato, la vita non confortata, fuorchè d'affetti lontani e contesi, e la speranza lungamente protrata, e il desiderio che comincia a farmi si supremo, di dormire finalmente in pace, da chè non ho potuto, vivere in terra mia,"—when I read these words they made me weep bitterly, and I thought of them always with a great pang at the heart. But it is not so, dear Mazzini,—you do not return to sleep under the sod of Italy, but to see your thought springing up all over the soil. The gardeners seem to me, in point of instinctive wisdom or deep thought, mostly incompetent to the care of the garden; but on idea like this will be able to make use of any implements. The necessity, it is to be hoped, will educate the men, by making them work. It is not this, I believe, which still keeps your heart so melancholy; for I seem to read the same melancholy in your answer to the Roman assembly, You speak of "few and late years," but some full ones still remain. A century is not needed, nor should the same man, in the same form of thought, work too long on an age. He would mould and bind it too much to himself. Better for him to die and return incarnated to give the same truth on yet another side. Jesus of Nazareth died young; but had he not spoken and acted as much truth as the world could bear in his time? A frailty, a perpetual short-coming, motion in a curve-line, seems the destiny of this earth.
The excuse awaits us elsewhere; there must be one,—for it is true, as said Goethe, "care is taken that the tree grow not up into the heavens." Men like you, appointed ministers, must not be less earnest in their work; yet to the greatest, the day, the moment is all their kingdom, God takes care of the increase.
Farewell! For your sake I could wish at this moment to be an Italian and a man of action; but though I am an American, I am not even a woman of action; so the best I can do is to pray with the whole heart, "Heaven bless dear Mazzini!—cheer his heart, and give him worthy helpers to carry out his holy purposes."