by his wish. An officer who had won
some celebrity in the Polish revolution, General Ramorino, a Savoyard
by origin, was given the command. Ramorino was a gambler, who could
not be trusted with money, but Mazzini's suspicion that on this
occasion he played the part of traitor is not proved. However that may
be, the expedition ended almost as soon as it began. Ramorino crossed
the frontier of Savoy at the head of the column, but when he heard
that a Polish reinforcement had been stopped on the Lake of Geneva, he
retreated into Switzerland, and advised the band to follow him.

After these events, Mazzini could no longer carry on his propaganda in
France. He took refuge in England, where a great part of his life was
to be passed, and of which he spoke, to the last, as his second
country. The first period of his residence in England was darkened by
the deep distress and discouragement into which the recent events had
plunged him; but his faith in the future prevailed, and he went on
with his work. His endeavours to help his fellow-exiles reduced him to
the last stage of poverty; the day came when he was obliged to pawn a
coat and an old pair of boots. These money difficulties did not
afflict him, and by degrees his writings in English periodicals
brought some addition to the small quarterly allowance which he
received from his mother. It seems strange, though it is easily
explained, that it was in London that he first got to know the Italian
working classes. He was surprised and gladdened by the abundance of
good elements which he found in them. No country, indeed, has more
reason to hope in her working men than the land whose sons have
tunnelled the Alps, cut the most arduous railway lines in America and
India, brought up English ships from the deep, laid the caissons (a
task of extreme danger) which support the great structure of the
Bridge of the Firth of Forth, and left their bones to whiten at
Panama. 'It is the universal testimony,' writes a high American
authority, 'that no more faithful men have come among us.' What was
the cause of the slaughter of the Aigues Mortes? That the Italians
worked too well.

Mazzini wrote for his humble friends the treatise on _The Duties of
Man_, in which he told them that he loved them too well to flatter
them. Another work that occupied him and consoled him was the rescue
and moral improvement of the children employed by organ-grinders, and
he was the first to call attention to the