assisted in their work by the aid of friendly States and potentates.  But underneath and apart from the matchless patriotism and ability of a few great men like D’Azeglio, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Manin, Cavour, and, not least, the King of Sardinia himself,—­who reigned at Turin as a constitutional monarch before the revolution,—­should be mentioned the almost universal passion of the Italian people to throw off the yokes which oppressed them, whether imposed by the King of Naples, or by the Pope as a temporal prince, or by Austria, or by the various princes who had divided between them the territories of the peninsula,—­diverse, yet banded together to establish their respective tyrannies, and to suppress liberal ideas of government and all reforms whatsoever.  All who could read and write, and even many who could not, except those who were dependent on the government or hopelessly wedded to the ideas and institutions of the Middle Ages,—­that conservative class to be found in every country, who cling to the past and dread the future,—­had caught the contagion spread by the apostles of liberty in France, in Spain, in Greece, in England.  The professors and students in the universities, professional men, and the well-to-do of the middle classes were foremost in their discontent and in their zeal for reform.  They did not agree in their theories of government, nor did they unite on any definite plan for relief.  Many were utterly impractical and visionary; some were at war with any settled government, and hated all wholesome restraints,—­communists and infidels, who would destroy, without substituting anything better instead; some were in favor of a pure democracy, and others of representative governments; some wanted a republic, and others a constitutional monarchy:  but all wanted a change.

There was one cry, one watchword common to all,—­Personal liberty!—­freedom to act and speak without the fear of inquisitions, spies, informers, prisons, and exile.  In Naples, in Rome, in Bologna, in Venice, in Florence, in Milan, in Turin, there was this universal desire for personal liberty, and the resolution to get it at any cost.  It was the soul of Italy going out in sympathy with all liberators and patriots throughout the world, intensified by the utterances of poets and martyrs, and kept burning by all the traditions of the past,—­by the glories of classic Rome; and by the aspirations of the renaissance, when art, literature, and commerce revived.  The common people united with their intellectual leaders in seeking something which would break their chains.  They alike responded to the cries of patriotism, in some form or other.  “Emancipate us from our tyrants, and we will follow you wherever you choose to lead,” was the feeling of all classes.  “We don’t care who rules us, or what form government may take, provided we are personally free.”

In addition to this passion for personal liberty was also the desire for a united Italy,—­a patriotic sentiment confined however to men of great intelligence, who scarcely expected such a boon, so great were the difficulties and obstacles which stared them in the face.  It was impossible for the liberators of Italy to have effected so marvellous a movement if the material on which they worked had not been so impulsive and inflammable.