With these friendships a new light and happiness came to his life. Probably, too, the consciousness of having played a great part nobly added a new touch of dignity and gentleness. "The indescribable look of suffering for others," noted one who met him now after a ten years' interval, "has disappeared, and he is now a man full of experience, patience, and hope." "The Roman revolution," wrote Carlyle to Emerson, "has made a man of him,—quite brightened up ever since." All the human sweetness in him blossomed out. His friends provided the home care, which he had lost, since he left his mother and sisters at Genoa twenty years ago; and he loved to repay them by many little marks of affection, never forgetting birthdays, buying presents of books and jewelry out of his slender purse, taking them to the Opera, where his acquaintance with the great Italian singers sometimes put boxes at his disposal. In his evenings at the Stansfelds he was often full of merry fun; he could tell a story well, all the more piquantly for his Italicisms. One favourite anecdote (he had told it to Mrs Carlyle) was how he baffled an undertaker, who brought a coffin by mistake to his landlady's, and refused to take it away. "My dear," he said, no doubt with his sweet gravity, "we have not here a dead." Or he would, when quite alone with the family, sing to his guitar, or finger out on it the score of some favourite opera. His native gentleness came out in his kindness to children and animals. He does not seem to have been naturally very fond of children, but, when among them, he made himself easily at home. Some French children at a house which he visited, who got into disgrace when Louis Blanc came to see them, were always good with Mazzini, "because he was so kind and never failed to enquire after the dolls." They loved to sit and listen to his talk, not that they understood him, but because the beautiful voice fascinated them. With dogs and cats and birds he was always happy. He would make one of his hostesses angry, because he insisted on feeding her dog at dinner. "But, my dear," he would say, "I make Bruno happy." Ledru Rollin and he, once talking, probably, of the European revolution, put out their cigars, because the smoke made a dog uncomfortable. His most constant companions were his tame linnets and canaries. He had netting over the windows, so that they could fly about his room at liberty; and visitors would generally find a bird or two perched on his head or shoulders, or hopping among his papers, inured to the thick tobacco smoke, in which they and he lived.

He was a brilliant talker, because he was in earnest and his thoughts were clear, at all events to himself. There was no trace of effort or affectation; he was always just himself and never played a part. He would speak with a prophet's simplicity and conviction of his religious faith and the destinies of man, talking vivaciously, tenaciously, passionately sometimes, with the authority of one who had no thought of self and had lived and suffered for his creed. Some of his hosts were the champions of every struggling cause, and the conversation turned naturally to American slavery or women's rights or nationality or cooperation. Music and poetry were favourite subjects with him, and he would contend pugnaciously in mock-earnestness for the superiority of Meyerbeer over Rossini, or inveigh to his heart's content against the abominated doctrine of "art for the sake of art." He once, when dining with Mr and Mrs William Shaen, forgot his dinner in his eagerness to convert his hostess from the heresy; and when pressed to eat, pleaded that he had something else to do, for "here is Mrs Shaen travelling to perdition as fast as she can, and I must save her soul." He spoke English now well and fluently, but,—unlike his English writing, which was rarely unidiomatic,—with many little Italicisms. Among those he seldom met, he was sometimes nervous and silent; at other times, perhaps from the same nervousness, he would monopolize the conversation, and was remorseful afterwards. Once, many years after this time, he met Jowett, and talked uninterruptedly for two hours, Jowett listening silently. When Jowett went, he observed, "he made me talk all the time, and I have no notion what he thought of it." Jowett, made careful notes of what he said, and years afterwards remarked, in allusion to their meeting, "Mazzini was a man of genius, but too much under the influence of two abstract ideas, God and the principle of nationality." He thought, though, very highly of him. "He was an enthusiast, a visionary," he said, "but he was a very noble character, and had a genius far beyond that of ordinary statesmen. Though not a statesman, I think that his reputation will increase as time goes on, when that of most statesmen disappears."

With those, who knew him well, constraining was the influence of this man, who spoke with authority of life and God and duty. Young people at all events, who came under the spell of those eyes, and heard the vibrating voice speak with passionate earnestness of the deep things of God, felt for him an awe and veneration, such as few, if any, of his generation inspired. Here was one who had given all for his ideal, who had taken poverty for his bride, yet without self-righteousness, too sad at the world's sin and struggle to be aught but humble; one too, who had lived on a great stage, who was helping to remodel Europe, a great thinker, a great moral teacher, yet with infinite concern for the trials and temptations of some puzzled soul. "Thou noble Mazzini," said Clough after brief knowledge of his life at Rome. Much deeper was the feeling of those, who had the privilege of close companionship. And, though, perhaps, it would be difficult to prove it, it is probable that he has left no inconsiderable impress on English thought. Here and there one finds strong traces of his influence on men, who have helped to mould the best thought among us in the last forty years. "Mazzini is the true teacher of our age," said Arnold Toynbee. Never, certainly, did age more need his high idealism to teach a nobler rule in national and private life.

His literary work at this time was not remarkable. He was "still praying God to grant him, when Italy had become a nation, two years of hermit life," when he could write his long-cherished book on religion and a popular history of Italian nationality. But the hope of ever writing them was gradually fading. He was too absorbed through all this period by political propagandism, and in his controversial writings of these years he is generally far from being at his best. The latter chapters of his Duties of Man, however, date from this decade. He seems, despite his busy life, to have found a good deal of time for reading. His writings on the Slav question are evidently the result of careful study. Apart from political reading, English literature seems to have claimed his interests. Byron was still to him the greatest of English poets, and he read Byroniana with the zest of a devotee. He could not forgive England for her neglect of her "only poet who will live in times to come." "I wish," he once wrote, "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." He was keenly interested in the controversy on Byron's treatment of his wife, refusing to believe that the husband was the more in fault, but owning himself too indiscriminating an admirer to be a fair judge.[20] He would contrast him with Wordsworth and Coleridge, criticizing the latter as contemplative poets, living remote from action among their lakes and mountains,—which proves that he had not read Wordsworth's patriotic sonnets. He liked Chatterton in a way, drawn doubtless to him by his sad end and de Vigny's drama; "I have always," he writes, "had a sort of fondness for him, as I have for crushed flowers." Among contemporary poets Mrs Browning was probably his favourite. He reads Aurora Leigh, "admiring it very much, only wishing from time to time that she had written it in beautiful prose than—passages excepted—in neglected poetry." Browning himself he is said to have read and admired. But perhaps he alludes to him when he writes, "the form in England begins to be systematically wrong, I think."

Meanwhile he had resumed his strong interest in English life and politics, stimulated no doubt by the keen thinkers he moved among, but always preserving his own original outlook. On the whole, his was not a very appreciative criticism. Sincerely and increasingly as he admired the freedom and seriousness of English ways, he keenly felt the decay of our religious life, and, what he regarded as its consequence, the selfishness and want of principle in our foreign policy. His knowledge of Protestantism was never very deep or sympathetic; but he knew enough of it to apply his own tests of religious vitality. He condemned it for its soul-killing formalism; he showed how it sinned against itself, when it ceased to be concerned with men as citizens; he poured scorn on the Bible Societies, that tried to proselytize his countrymen, and made no sign, when he and other Italians had fought at Rome for liberty of conscience. It was to this want of true religion, that he charged our insular selfishness. He detested the Cobdenites. "The 'peace-men' have no principle." "Your Peace Societies," he wrote in an open letter to "the people of England," "allowing God's law and Godlike human life to be systematically crushed on the two-thirds of Europe,—your believers in liberty as the only pledge for man's responsibility, allying themselves with despots,—your Christians fighting for the maintenance of Mahommedan law on European populations,—seem to me to be the reverse of religious." If England gave no helping hand to the young nationalities to which belonged the future, she would find herself in twenty years shut out from the sympathies and alliances and markets of the Continent. He vigorously condemned the Crimean War, and took his stand with the few, who tried to save England from that colossal blunder. Not that he objected to war with the oppressor of the Poles. But a war, which might have been a crusade for the downtrodden peoples of the East, had ranged England, once the champion of liberty, on the side of Turkey and Austria. The alliance with the tyrant of Italy and Hungary "took from the war whatever made it sacred in the eyes of God and man." It pledged English backing for the evilest of Continental despotisms. It robbed the war of any principle, and "war is the greatest of crimes, when it is not waged for the benefit of mankind, for the sake of a great truth to enthrone or of a great lie to entomb." He "bowed before" the heroism of the army, "the quiet, silent devotedness, with which the nation accepts all the sacrifices inseparable from a war"; but "the policy of your war," he said, "is absolutely immoral, how can you hope for victory?" How different had it been, had England avoided the dishonouring touch of Austria, and sought her ally in a Polish revolution.

Mazzini's interest in English society and politics was, like everything else except his friendships, turned to the use of his own country. He expected three results from his English propagandism,—to secure for Italy the moral support of English opinion and the English press, to influence the foreign policy of the country in her favour, and to obtain money for his insurrectionary schemes. He worked on the traditional sympathy for Italy, and tried to turn it from its belief in Piedmont to his own revolutionary and democratic programme. He appealed to the anti-Papal feeling of the country, and played on the theme that a free Italy would allow fair play for Protestant missions. With men of the Manchester School he argued that free trade would follow free government; with the working classes he spoke of the common interests of working men the world over. His own friends he constantly enlisted in his schemes, and made large levies on their private purses. "It makes my hair stand on end," said one of them—a well-known politician—afterwards, "to think of what I did at the suggestion of that man." Public opinion he hoped to influence through the Society of the Friends of Italy, founded in the autumn of 1851 by the men, who had promoted the People's International League four years before,—James Stansfeld, Peter Taylor, William Ashurst, William Shaen. Some of the best English Liberals of the day were on the committee,—William Byles of Bradford, Joseph Cowen, George Dawson, John Forster, W. E. Forster, J. A. Froude, G. J. Holyoake, William Howitt, Douglas Jerrold, Walter Savage Landor, G. H. Lewes, W. J. Linton, David Masson, Edward Miall, Professor Newman. Mazzini generally, if not always, spoke at their annual meetings,—with intense nervousness, for he was not yet sufficient master of English to speak it fluently, and he "could not think without a pen in his hand." "I cannot understand people," he writes, "who can prepare a speech or article walking up and down their room or garden. I could walk about a day without an idea entering my head." His speeches, none the less, seem to have been eloquent and successful, his manner being, as the newspapers reported, "most exciting." The Society suspended work, when the Crimean War broke out, and was re-constituted again at the end of 1856. As far as money went, Mazzini got less than he hoped from his English agitation. A few friends gave generously, but there was little of the response that came to Garibaldi's appeal a few years later. But the Society did much to win English opinion, if not for Mazzini's own special schemes, at all events for the bigger question of Italian liberty. The Leader, the Daily News, the Morning Advertiser opened their columns, and did something to counteract the anti-Italian bias of the Times. In 1857 a fairly vigorous agitation, especially in the North and Scotland, carried on the work that Kossuth's meetings had begun, and roused a vehement popular feeling against Austria.

Chapter IX
Mazzini and Cavour
1850-1857. Aetat 45-52.

The Piedmontese School—Mazzini and Cavour—The French alliance—Mazzini and Manin—The theory of the dagger—Conspiracies—The Genoese plot of 1857.

It is painful to turn from Mazzini in England, the great-hearted friend, the prophetic thinker, the generous worker in the cause of man, to his political action in Italy. Had he yielded to the advice of some of his friends and left politics at this time for literature, his fame were brighter and his life more fruitful in pure good. His work for Italy was done; he had conquered it for more than half his creed. Half its best men had been nurtured on his writings, had learned from him to believe in independence and unity, though still they spoke of unity in whispers, and he himself knew not how far opinion had advanced. The day of conspiracy had passed; free Piedmont was slowly marshalling the forces of the nation for another and decisive war. The republic became impossible on the day, when Victor Emmanuel swore loyalty to the constitution, and thereby proclaimed himself champion of Italian aspirations. The one thing needful was to rally every section of patriots to the one possible flag. To attack the monarchy now only hurt the bigger issue, lost sight of the great goal in mists of schism, brought bitterness and dissension where discipline was all important for the day of trial. No one was more insistent than Mazzini on the need of discipline, but in practice he conditioned it in these years by being himself leader. One who found it so difficult to compromise, could hardly follow.