, sought an asylum in England, where he betook himself to
the literary pursuits which had formed the delight of his younger years,
and to the benevolent endeavor of improving the moral state of the humbler
classes of his countrymen whom he found scattered about in London;
particularly of the poor organ boys, whom, sold by venal parents to sordid
masters, or lured from their beautiful native scenes by fallacious
representations, he beheld lost in ignorance, enslaved in vice, and
suffering under every species of ill-treatment and destitution. His
founding an evening school for these unfortunate outcasts was a mortal
offense in the eyes of the Roman Catholic priests of every
denomination--for a layman to presume to instruct the ignorant, and to hold
out a hand to the helpless, was, in their eyes, an unpardonable crime; and
they strove to vilify all his acts by connecting them with covert designs
of exciting anarchy and rebellion, even in the land that had afforded him
a refuge. Nevertheless, the blameless tenor of his domestic life, the
magnanimity with which he bore his disappointments and his trials, and the
respect in which he was held both for his talents and his private
character, which no calumny has ever yet been able to impugn, would have
insured him as undisturbed a tranquillity as his anxiety for his country,
ever throbbing in his breast, could have permitted him, had he not
suddenly been brought forth to public notice, by the English government
committing a flagrant act of injustice toward him, which the more it
endeavored to explain and vindicate, the more odium it brought upon
itself--we allude to the opening of Mazzini's letters at the General
Post-Office in 1844, by order of Lord Aberdeen and the _Right Honorable_
Sir James Graham, at the instigation of Austrian jealousies and fears. The
disgraceful disclosures that were brought forward on that occasion, will
be fresh in the memory of many of our readers.

The stirring events of Italy in 1847, naturally turned all the thoughts
and hopes of Mazzini again to his country, and to the heightening, by his
presence, the effect of his doctrines, so long, so ardently preached. But
we must be brief; we shall, therefore, pass over intervening steps, and
behold him in Rome--Rome proclaimed a republic, Rome, at that moment,
promising to realize all the most glorious visions of his youth, all the
most thoughtfully-revolved theories of his matured powers. He was elected
on