of after life; he had a shrewd sense of humour, perhaps inherited from his mother; when warmed by enthusiasm or indignation, he could speak with a fiery eloquence, that was remarkable even among those declamatory Italian youths. "My soul," he wrote afterwards, "was then a smile for all created things, life showed to my virgin fancy as a dream of love, my warmest thoughts were for nature's loveliness and the ideal woman of my youth." He revelled in generous actions, sharing books and money, even clothes, with his poorer friends. But it was sheer force of character that gave him his ascendancy over them—the loyal, justice-loving nature that made him champion of every victim of undergraduate or professorial spite, the purity of thought, that checked each loose or coarse word from those about him. That clear, high soul, untouched by self, not knowing fear, passionate for righteousness, gave him even when a lad the power that belongs only to the saints of God.

His closest friends were three brothers, Jacopo, Giovanni, and Agostino Ruffini. Jacopo, the eldest of the three, had perhaps more influence on Mazzini's life than any other man. They were born on the same day; and Jacopo's fine, sensitive, enthusiastic nature matched well with Mazzini's own. The tragic fate, that afterwards brought his life to an early close, only strengthened the influence; and the memory of one so dear, who gave his life for their common cause, remained a perennial inspiration to keep his faith alive in years of weariness and failure. The other brothers had little of Jacopo's temperament. Giovanni at this time was an even-tempered, humourous, brilliant lad; Agostino was impressionable, impulsive, shallow, of quick and artistic nature. Mazzini's closest companions for some years, they proved how little they could rise to his high level, and they repaid his devotion by a want of sympathy and an ingratitude, which, in Agostino's case at all events, was gross. In later life both attained in their small way; both were deputies in the Piedmontese parliament, and Giovanni was minister at Paris. They long moved in English society and had some reputation there. Agostino, who was for a time a teacher at Edinburgh, is the "Signor Sperano" who tells the story of The Poor Clare, in Mrs Gaskell's Round the Sofa. Giovanni, who became as proficient in English as in his mother tongue, wrote two notable but now half-forgotten tales, Lorenzo Benoni and Doctor Antonio, which stand among the best second-rate novels of his time.

Under Mazzini's lead the group of friends at Genoa formed a society to study literature and politics and smuggle in forbidden books. Half the masterpieces of contemporary European literature came at this time under the censor's ban; no foreign papers were admitted except two ultra-monarchical French journals; and contraband was a necessity of literary study. Mazzini's strongest interests took him to literature. He read omnivorously in Italian and French and English and translations from the German.[2] His favourite books, he tells us, were the Bible and Dante, Shakespeare and Byron. His close knowledge of the Gospels comes out in everything he wrote. He shed his orthodoxy indeed as soon as he began to think; he went sometimes to mass, when a lad, and read Condorcet's Esquisse disguised as a missal; but he refused to go to confession as soon as he understood its meaning,—the one thing, apparently, in all his life which pained his mother. For a short time he went through a phase of scepticism, but the Ruffinis' mother soon rescued him from this, and a deep religious faith came to him, to remain the spring of all his life. The poets he loved best were Dante and Byron, and he always remained true to them. From Dante he learnt many of the master-ideas of his mind, the conception of the unity of man and unity of law, the fervid patriotism, the belief in Italy and Rome predestined to be teachers of the world, the faith in Italian Unity, the moral strength that makes life one long fight for good. When only some twenty years old, he wrote an essay on Dante's patriotism, which, however boyish in style, proves his close knowledge of the master. Byron was then at the height of his fame, and then, as always afterwards, Mazzini thought him the greatest of modern English, perhaps of modern European poets. He was "completely fascinated" by Goethe, and would often say that "to pass a day with him or a genius like him would be the fairest day of life." How his admiration for Goethe waned, while that for Byron grew, will be told in another chapter.[3] He read Shakespeare, but always, apparently, with more respect than enjoyment, and Shakespeare too came under the same ban as Goethe. He thought very highly of Schiller, and placed him with Æschylus and Shakespeare, as the third great dramatist of the world. He read a good deal of English literature; at this time he was a fervent admirer of Scott, but he seems afterwards to have lost his interest in him; he knew something at least of Wordsworth and Shelley, Burns and Crabbe. Modern French literature, except de Vigny's and some of Victor Hugo's writings, did not now (nor, with the exception of George Sand and Lamennais, at any time), appeal to him, for he disliked the tendencies of French Romanticism, and already there were the beginnings of his life-long prejudice against most things French. Among his modern fellow-countrymen Alfieri and Foscolo were his favourites; he read Manzoni and Guerrazzi, but largely to criticise them, though he was ready to do justice to the strength of both. He thought Mickiewicz, the Polish national poet, "the most powerful poetic nature of the time." The classics he no doubt read pretty widely, as every educated lad was then bound to do, but none seem to have made much impression on him, except Æschylus, for whom his veneration was unbounded, and Tacitus. Both now and later he gave much time to metaphysical and political writers. He read something of Hegel, whom he detested for his political fatalism, of Kant and Fichte; but the German who influenced him most was the now-forgotten Herder. From him he learned or confirmed his spiritual conception of life, his belief in immortality, his theory of the progress of humanity and man's co-operation in the work of Providence. Among Italian philosophers he studied Giordano Bruno and Vico; he rated the latter at his real worth, and regarded him as the great luminary of an Italian school of thought whose continuity he professed to trace from Pythagoras. Among political writers Macchiavelli certainly impressed him most, as a great Italian patriot, and he excused his morality as a product of his time. He seems to have known a good deal of Voltaire and Rousseau. Of recent political writers, he and his circle most read Guizot and Victor Cousin, whose lectures at this time made them the mentors of young liberalism; he records how the group at Genoa handed on to one another manuscript copies of the lectures, and found their inspiration in the men whom they were soon to regard as traitors.

Now and for long after, literature was the call that spoke sweetest to Mazzini. Politics and conspiracy were constraining but unwelcomed duties; he gave his love to literature. To be a dramatist or write historical novels was at this time his plan of life. Many a time in later years he was still looking for the day, when Italy would be united and free, and, his political task accomplished, he could give