One cannot help pausing here to reflect that in both historic instances the supremacy of Rome was due to a superiority of civilization which she has long lost, and is not likely to regain in this day of the world.
Mazzini says to the Pope: "There is no man this day in all Europe more powerful than you; you then have, most Holy Father, vast duties."
He now passes on to a review of the situation:—
"Europe is in a tremendous crisis of doubts and desires. Faith is dead. Catholicism is lost in despotism; Protestantism is lost in anarchy. The intellect travels in a void. The bad adore calculation, physical good; the good pray and hope; nobody believes....
"I call upon you, after so many ages of doubt and corruption, to be the apostle of eternal[227] truth. I call upon you to make yourself the 'servant of all;' to sacrifice yourself, if needful, so that the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven; to hold yourself ready to glorify God in victory, or to repeat with resignation, if you must fail, the words of Gregory VII.: 'I die in exile because I have loved justice and hated iniquity.'
"But for this, to fulfil the mission which God confides to you, two things are needful,—to be a believer, and to unify Italy."
The first of these two clauses is here amplified into an exhortation which, edifying in itself, had in it nothing likely to suggest to the person addressed any practical solution of the difficulties which surrounded him.
Having shown the Head of Christendom the way to right belief, Mazzini next instructs him how to unify Italy:—
"For this you have no need to work, but [only to] bless Him who works through you and in your name. Gather round you those who best represent the national party. Do not beg alliances with princes. Say, 'The unity of Italy ought to be a fact of the nineteenth century,' and it will suffice. Leave our pens free; leave free the circulation of ideas in what regards this point, vital for us, of the national unity."
Here follow some special directions with regard[228] to the several powers to be dealt with in the projected unification. The result of all this, foreseen by Mazzini, would be the foundation of "a government unique in Europe, which shall destroy the absurd divorce between spiritual and temporal power, and in which you shall be chosen to represent the principle of which the men chosen by the nation will make the application."