Page:Poetical works of Mathilde Blind.djvu/41

Rh Mazzini, nevertheless, was Mathilde's especial hero, and no one who talked with her respecting him could doubt the genuineness of the "boundless veneration" with which in these letters she represents this modern Dante as having inspired her. She frequently, however, ventured to contradict his views, and on some points her more youthful and flexible intellect seems to have had the advantage over the austere, indescribably pure and elevated, but for that very reason somewhat narrow mind that already in some measure represented a past generation. Their differences about Byron are almost amusing, evident as it is that chronology was at the bottom of them. Mathilde in 1830 would have felt exactly as Mazzini still felt in 1860. Though not placing Byron on the pedestal accorded to him by his English contemporaries and Continental imitators, Mathilde did not lack enthusiasm for the poet whose letters she was afterwards to edit; she had read "Childe Harold" eight times, and almost knew it by heart. On matters more immediately affecting her own personality Mazzini was the same helpful and inspiring teacher to Mathilde as he was to all within the range of his influence. Once at the moment of leave-taking, he reproached her with being an aristocrat, "because I had more feeling for the sufferings of celebrated people than for those of unknown persons." "I ran like lightning to put on my bonnet, rushed downstairs again, and soon overtook him outside the house. As we turned the corner I was so pleased at the success of my trick that I jumped and clapped my hands. Mazzini looked at me as one often looks at a child. He quite understood my action, and did not object to my walking with him. I accompanied him as far as the middle of Hyde Park; our conversation turned on the most serious questions of life. It is so deeply engraved on my mind