Strada Nuova at Genoa one Sunday in April 1821, when a tall,
black-bearded man with a fiery glance held towards them a white
handkerchief, saying: 'For the refugees of Italy.' Mazzini's mother,
gave him some money, and he passed on. In the streets were many
unfamiliar faces; the fugitives from Turin and Alessandria were
gathered at Genoa before they departed by sea into exile. The
impression which that scene made on the mind of the boy of sixteen was
never effaced.

Owing to his delicate health, Mazzini's early education was carried on
at home, where the social atmosphere was that of one of those little
centres in a provincial capital which are composed of a few people,
mostly kindred, of similar tastes, who lead useful and refined lives,
content with moderate ease. The real exclusiveness of such centres
exceeds any that exists in the most aristocratic sphere in the world.
The Mazzinis were, moreover, Genoese to the core; and this was another
reason for exclusiveness, and for holding aloof from the governing
class. Mazzini was born a few days after Napoleon entered Genoa as its
lord. He had not, therefore, breathed the air of the ancient Republic;
but there was the unadulterated republicanism of a thousand years in
his veins.

When he grew to manhood his appearance was striking. The black,
flowing hair, the pale, olive complexion, the finely-cut features and
lofty brow, the deep-set eyes, which could smile as only Italian eyes
can smile, but which could also flash astral infinitudes of scorn, the
fragile figure, even the long, delicate, tapering fingers, marked him
for a man apart--though whether a poet or an apostle, a seer or a
saint, it was not easy to decide. Yet this could be said at once: if
this man concentrated all his being on a single point, he would wield
the power, call it what we will, which in every age has worked
miracles and moved mountains.

Mazzini became a Carbonaro, though the want of clear, guiding
principles in Carbonarism made him misdoubt its efficacy, and its
hierarchical mysteries and initiatory ordeals repelled him by their
childishness. Then followed his arrest, and his detention in the
fortress of Savona, which was the turning-point in his mental life.
Before that date he learnt, after it he taught. From his high-perched
cell he saw the sea and the sky--with the Alps, the sublimest things
in Nature. The voices of the fishermen reached his ears, though he
could not see them. A tame goldfi