European Republicans; Recollections of Mazzini and His Friends (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ... YOUNG ITALY. THE FORMATION OF A NATION IS A RELIGION. "Italy is a single nation: her unity of manners, of language, and of literature ought, at a period more or less remote, to unite her inhabitants under one government."--Napoleon, at St. Helena. 1814--Napoleon was fallen. Whatever hopes yet remained to the peoples whom he had crushed beneath the wheels of his ambition were buried with him at St. Helena. The "Holy Alliance" of kingvultures, single and double headed, was proclaimed, and they had again fixed their talons in the throbbing heart of Europe. Peace had come, and the Treaty of Vienna had but to arrange the new map--to last for ever. Italy was returned to her old masters, Austrian, Bourbon, Papal, and Savoyard, --the last permitted to share by grace of the greater Kaisers, to keep out France, whose restlessness was still feared. Seven rulers cut up the land, seven rulers, some better, some worse, so dividing the spoil the more easily to keep possession, held down the Peninsula. Excellent arrangement, but Italy, the birth-place of Brutus and of Dante, was not content. Ere seven yeara had passed there was an insurrection, the war for Italian liberty resumed. Giuseppe (Joseph) Mazzini was born on the 22nd of June, 1805, in the Strada Lomellini, Genoa, in which city was then living his father Giacomo Mazzini, physician and professor of anatomy. His mother, Maria Drago, is said to have been of great personal beauty, quick and vigorous intellect, and strong affections. The child Joseph, one of several children, was during his earliest years delicate and fragile, --" nearly six years of age before he could walk firmly." Incapacitated in consequence for the ordinary amusements of childhood, his mind became precociously active, and study...