A new epoch has begun which need not detain the chronicler of Italian Liberation. The prose of possession succeeds the poetry of desire. Nothing, however, can lessen the greatness of the achievement. With regard to the future, it may be allowable to recall the superstition which, like so many other seemingly meaningless beliefs, becomes full of meaning when read according to the spirit: that a house stands long if its foundations be watered with the blood of sacrifice. No work of man was ever watered with a purer blood than the restoration of Italy to the ranks of living nations. And the last word of this book shall be Hope.
THE END.
COLSTON AND COMPANY, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH.
FOOTNOTES:
See Memoirs of Lord Castlereagh, 1848, Vol. i. p. 34.
It is now Carlyle's turn to be aspersed. Let Mazzini speak for him from the grave: 'I do not know if I told you,' he wrote to the Marchesa Eleonora Curlo Ruffini, in a letter published a few months ago, 'that I have met upon my path, deserted enough, I hope, by choice, a Scotchman of mind and things, the first person here, up till now, with whom I sympathise and who sympathises with me. We differ in nearly all opinions, but his are so sincere and disinterested that I respect them. He is good, good, good; he has been, and I think he is still, unhappy in spite of the fame which surrounds him; he has a wife with talent and feeling; always ailing; no children. They live out of town, and I go to see them every now and then. They have no insular or other prejudices that jar upon me. I have grown more intimate with this man in consequence, I think, of an article I wrote here, after knowing him, against an historical work of his; perhaps, accustomed as he is to common-place praise, to which he is indifferent, my frankness pleased him. For the rest I shall see him rarely, and I can only give him esteem and the warmest sympathy—not friendship, which I can henceforth give to no one.' (22nd March 1840.)