an old priest, but no one directed his extensive course of reading.
He became a student at the university of Genoa at an unusually
early age, and intended to follow his father’s profession, but
being unable to conquer his horror of practical anatomy, he
decided to graduate in law (1826). His exceptional abilities,
together with his remarkable generosity, kindness and loftiness
of character, endeared him to his fellow students. As to his
inner life during this period, we have only one brief but significant
sentence; “for a short time,” he says, “my mind was somewhat
tainted by the doctrines of the foreign materialistic school;
but the study of history and the intuitions of conscience—the
only tests of truth—soon led me back to the spiritualism of our
Italian fathers.”
The natural bent of his genius was towards literature, and, in the course of the four years of his nominal connexion with the legal profession, he wrote a considerable number of essays and reviews, some of which have been wholly or partially reproduced in the critical and literary volumes of his Life and Writings. His first essay, characteristically enough on “Dante’s Love of Country,” was sent to the editor of the Antologia fiorentina in 1826, but did not appear until some years afterwards in the Subalpino. He was an ardent supporter of romanticism as against what he called “literary servitude under the name of classicism”; and in this interest all his critiques (as, for example, that of Giannoni’s “Exile” in the Indicatore Livornese, 1829) were penned. But in the meantime the “republican instincts” which he tells us he had inherited from his mother had been developing, and his sense of the evils under which Italy was groaning had been intensified; and at the same time he became possessed with the idea that Italians, and he himself in particular, “could and therefore ought to struggle for liberty of country.” Therefore, he at once put aside his dearest ambition, that of producing a complete history of religion, developing his scheme of a new theology uniting the spiritual with the practical life, and devoted himself to political thought. His literary articles accordingly became more and more suggestive of advanced liberalism in politics, and led to the suppression by government of the Indicatore Genovese and the Indicatore Livornese successively. Having joined the Carbonari, he soon rose to one of the higher grades in their hierarchy, and was entrusted with a special secret mission into Tuscany; but, as his acquaintance grew, his dissatisfaction with the organization of the society increased, and he was already meditating the formation of a new association stripped of foolish mysterious and theatrical formulae, which instead of merely combating existing authorities should have a definite and purely patriotic aim, when shortly after the French revolution of 1830 he was betrayed, while initiating a new member, to the Piedmontese authorities. He was imprisoned in the fortress of Savona on the western Riviera for about six months, when, a conviction having been found impracticable through deficiency of evidence, he was released, but upon conditions involving so many restrictions of his liberty that he preferred the alternative of leaving the country. He withdrew accordingly into France, living chiefly in Marseilles.
While in his lonely cell at Savona, in presence of “those symbols of the infinite, the sky and the sea,” with a greenfinch for his sole companion, and having access to no books but “a Tacitus, a Byron, and a Bible,” he had finally become aware of the great mission or “apostolate” (as he himself called it) of his life; and soon after his release his prison meditations took shape in the programme of the organization which was destined soon to become so famous throughout Europe, that of La Giovine Italia, or Young Italy. Its publicly avowed aims were to be the liberation of Italy both from foreign and domestic tyranny, and its unification under a republican form of government; the means to be used were education, and, where advisable, insurrection by guerrilla bands; the motto was to be “God and the people,” and the banner was to bear on one side the words “Unity” and “Independence” and on the other “Liberty,” “Equality,” and “Humanity,” to describe respectively the national and the international aims. In April 1831 Charles Albert, “the ex-Carbonaro conspirator of 1821,” succeeded Charles Felix on the Sardinian throne, and towards the close of that year Mazzini, making himself, as he afterwards confessed, “the interpreter of a hope which he did not share,” wrote the new king a letter, published at Marseilles, urging him to take the lead in the impending struggle for Italian independence. Clandestinely reprinted, and rapidly circulated all over Italy, its bold and outspoken words produced a great sensation, but so deep was the offence it gave to the Sardinian government that orders were issued for the immediate arrest and imprisonment of the author should he attempt to cross the frontier. Towards the end of the same year appeared the important Young Italy “Manifesto,” the substance of which is given in the first volume of the Life and Writings of Mazzini; and this was followed soon afterwards by the society’s Journal, which, smuggled across the Italian frontier, had great success in the objects for which it was written, numerous “congregations” being formed at Genoa, Leghorn, and elsewhere. Representations were consequently made by the Sardinian to the French government, which issued in an order for Mazzini’s withdrawal from Marseilles (Aug. 1832); he lingered for a few months in concealment, but ultimately found it necessary to retire into Switzerland.
From this point it is somewhat difficult to follow the career of the mysterious and terrible conspirator who for twenty years out of the next thirty led a life of voluntary imprisonment (as he himself tells us) “within the four walls of a room,” and “kept no record of dates, made no biographical notes, and preserved no copies of letters.” In 1833, however, he is known to have been concerned in an abortive revolutionary movement which took place in the Sardinian army; several executions took place, and he himself was laid under sentence of death. Before the close of the same year a similar movement in Genoa had been planned, but failed through the youth and inexperience of the leaders. At Geneva, also in 1833, Mazzini set on foot L’Europe Centrale, a journal of which one of the main objects was the emancipation of Savoy; but he did not confine himself to a merely literary agitation for this end. Chiefly through his agency a considerable body of German, Polish and Italian exiles was organized, and an armed invasion of the duchy planned. The frontier was actually crossed on the 1st of February 1834, but the attack ignominiously broke down without a shot having been fired. Mazzini, who personally accompanied the expedition, is no doubt correct in attributing the failure to dissensions with the Carbonari leaders in Paris, and to want of a cordial understanding between himself and the Savoyard Ramorino, who had been chosen as military leader.
In April 1834 the “Young Europe” association “of men believing in a future of liberty, equality and fraternity for all mankind, and desirous of consecrating their thoughts and actions to the realization of that future” was formed also under the influence of Mazzini’s enthusiasm; it was followed soon afterwards by a “Young Switzerland” society, having for its leading idea the formation of an Alpine confederation, to include Switzerland, Tyrol, Savoy and the rest of the Alpine chain as well. But La Jeune Suisse newspaper was compelled to stop within a year, and in other respects the affairs of the struggling patriot became embarrassed. He was permitted to remain at Grenchen in Solothurn for a while, but at last the Swiss diet, yielding to strong and persistent pressure from abroad, exiled him about the end of 1836. In January 1837 he arrived in London, where for many months he had to carry on a hard fight with poverty and the sense of spiritual loneliness, so touchingly described by himself in the first volume of the Life and Writings. Ultimately, as he gained command of the English language, he began to earn a livelihood by writing review articles, some of which have since been reprinted, and are of a high order of literary merit; they include papers on “Italian Literature since 1830” and “Paolo Sarpi” in the Westminster Review, articles on “Lamennais,” “George Sand,” “Byron and Goethe” in the Monthly Chronicle, and on “Lamartine,” “Carlyle,” and “The Minor Works of Dante” in the British and Foreign Review. In 1839 he entered into relations with the revolutionary committees sitting in Malta and Paris, and in 1840 he originated a working
