Speaking of the republic, you say, do not I wish Italy had a great man?  Mazzini is a great man.  In mind, a great poetic statesman; in heart, a lover; in action, decisive and full of resource as Caesar.  Dearly I love Mazzini.  He came in, just as I had finished the first letter to you.  His soft, radiant look makes melancholy music in my soul; it consecrates my present life, that, like the Magdalen, I may, at the important hour, shed all the consecrated ointment on his head.  There is one, Mazzini, who understands thee well; who knew thee no less when an object of popular fear, than now of idolatry; and who, if the pen be not held too feebly, will help posterity to know thee too.

TO W.H.C.

Rome, July 8, 1849.—­I do not yet find myself tranquil and recruited from the painful excitements of these last days.  But, amid the ruined hopes of Rome, the shameful oppressions she is beginning to suffer, amid these noble, bleeding martyrs, my brothers, I cannot fix my thoughts on anything else.

I write that you may assure mother of my safety, which in the last days began to be seriously imperilled.  Say, that as soon as I can find means of conveyance, without an expense too enormous, I shall go again into the mountains.  There I shall find pure, bracing air, and I hope stillness, for a time.  Say, she need feel no anxiety, if she do not hear from me for some time.  I may feel indisposed to write, as I do now; my heart is too full.

Private hopes of mine are fallen with the hopes of Italy.  I have played for a new stake, and lost it.  Life looks too difficult.  But for the present I shall try to wave all thought of self and renew my strength.

After the attempt at revolution in France failed, could I have influenced Mazzini, I should have prayed him to capitulate, and yet I feel that no honorable terms can be made with such a foe, and that the only way is never to yield; but the sound of the musketry, the sense that men were perishing in a hopeless contest, had become too terrible for my nerves.  I did not see Mazzini, the last two weeks of the republic.  When the French entered, he walked about the streets, to see how the people bore themselves, and then went to the house of a friend.  In the upper chamber of a poor house, with his life-long friends,—­the Modenas,—­I found him.  Modena, who abandoned not only what other men hold dear,—­home, fortune, peace,—­but also endured, without the power of using the prime of his great artist-talent, a ten years’ exile in a foreign land; his wife every way worthy of him,—­such a woman as I am not.

Mazzini had suffered millions more than I could; he had borne his fearful responsibility; he had let his dearest friends perish; he had passed all these nights without sleep; in two short months, he had grown old; all the vital juices seemed exhausted; his eyes were all blood-shot; his skin orange; flesh he had none; his hair was mixed with white:  his hand was painful to the touch; but he had never flinched, never quailed; had protested in the last hour against surrender; sweet and calm, but full of a more fiery purpose than ever; in him I revered the hero, and owned myself not of that mould.