The World's Best Essays, From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 8 (Classic Reprint)

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Excerpt from The World's Best Essays, From the Earliest Period to the Present Time, Vol. 8 Giuseppe Mazzini was one of the most remarkable men of the nineteenth century, and though his work as the creator of United Italy has overshadowed his achievement as a writer, there is no question but that his writings alone would have perpetuated his memory, were they the sole monument of his extraordinary genius. It is true, however, and it must not be forgotten in connection with them, that his essays, and indeed whatever else he has written, are incidents of the moral force and intellectual activity which made him one of the great agencies in compelling the progress of Europe in spite of the strong reactionary tendencies of the second half of the nineteenth century. A man of action whose whole life was that of the leaven which disturbs while it renovates the lump, he wrote not for the sake of artistic expression, but rather to express what he conceived to be the purposes of a broader humanity and a higher civilization. He was born at Genoa in June, 1805. His father, Giacomo Mazzini, a reputable physician of that city, was able to give him a university education, and in 1826 Mazzini graduated in law after having completed his course in literature. He joined the Carbonari society at an early age, but became dissatisfied with its methods and was on the point of organizing a new association when he was arrested (1830) and imprisoned for six months in the fortress of Savona. There he conceived what he called his "Apostolate, " and on his release he began the serious work of his life, - nothing less than the enfranchisement of Italy and Europe. He purposed to organize the young men of Italy and other European countries to check centralization and to substitute self-governing republics of free people for the great military empires which were then beginning to threaten. Taking refuge at Marseilles, and when driven from Marseilles working from Geneva and London, he organized the Young Europe Association of 1834, and was largely instrumental in organizing the movement of 1847 and 1848, which resulted in the German Revolution. As a result of this movement, during which the Roman republic of 1849 collapsed almost immediately after it was proclaimed, he spent much of his life not merely an exile, but a hunted exile, with a sentence of death hanging over his head. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.