The Times having observed in a leading article that the gravity of the fact in question, the violation of private correspondence in the Post Office, was not affected by the merits or demerits of Mr Mazzini, of whom it professed to ‘know nothing,’ Thomas Carlyle wrote next day a letter containing words which may be quoted as some of the best and truest ever written about the great Italian:  ’I have had the honour to know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.’ [2]

CHAPTER V

THE POPE LIBERATOR

1844-1847

Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.—­The Petty Princes—­Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand.

The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the liberation of Italy will have passed away.  Already a generation has grown up which can but faintly realise the passionate hopes and fears with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set foot in Italy.  Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence that it never will again.  Italy rising from the grave was the living romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now.  There were, indeed, some who asked what was all this to them?  What were the ’extraneous Austrian Emperor,’ or the ‘old chimera of a Pope’ (Carlyle’s designations) to the British taxpayer?  Some there were in England who were deeply attached still to the ’Great Hinge on which Europe depended,’ and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples, about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of the Quarterly Review.  But on the whole, English men and women—­in mind half Italian, whether they will it or not, from the day they begin to read their own literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to Shelley, from Shelley to Rossetti and Swinburne—­were united at that time in warmth of feeling towards struggling Italy as they have been united in no political sentiment relating to another nation, and in few concerning their own country.