Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/302

312 people gathered around him; when men and women became the willing instruments of that object and that realm—which was proclaimed as that of Italy, as especially that of Rome, the centre and heart of Italy. What would they? The same as in this moment of the spirit's rising, the whole Italy, and one united, free and noble Italy, under free institutions, represented by the free sons of the country, who can lead it forward in morality, laws, in all institutions which have for their object the highest well-being of the people. Even Mazzini entertained a high moral ideal of government, and although he did not allow a place to religion and the church, he nevertheless acknowledges the hero of Christendom as the leader and the teacher on the path of freedom. The Republic was to him the only form in which the ideal of government could be realized; freedom from foreign power, and the dominion of the Pope, the first condition of the regeneration of Italy. Insurrection in all points in Italy, was to him the principal means. “Wherever only three persons were together, they should unite themselves to protest again the dominion of the Pope and foreign intervention in the affairs of Italy, unite themselves to recognize the Mazzinian principles of brotherly love, humanity and patriotism, and thus should, from a hundred or a thousand of small points, arise one great, united whole.”

By means of his personal character and his eloquence, by that which his view contained of the actually moral, just, and noble, Mazzini wrought up to enthusiasm many people, as well in Rome, as in the whole of Italy. Few men have had more fervent