This idea was the especial property of Vincenzo Gioberti, already mentioned among the men to whom Italian regeneration owes most. Its very fallacy was a powerful aid to the popular cause, for it conciliated many who would have shrunk from openly assailing the Pope’s secular authority, while at the same time it was not so obviously unsound as to be incapable of being maintained in good faith until refuted by the course of events. Although, nevertheless, Gioberti’s essay on Italy’s spiritual and intellectual primacy is the most important of his works, it almost disappears in the mass of the remainder, treating for the most part of religion, or of moral or speculative philosophy. Among them was a violent attack on the writings of the most eminent Italian philosopher of the age, ANTONIO ROSMINI-SERBATI (1797-1855), who in turn accused Gioberti of pantheism. The great purpose of Rosmini’s philosophy may be defined to be the perfecting of St. Thomas Aquinas’s system by expelling the element it had derived from Aristotle, which in Rosmini’s view led direct to pantheism and materialism. He laboured hard at this object all his life, but died before his work was done. It says much for his genius that one so encumbered with childish ultramontane notions should have won the acknowledged rank he holds among the first philosophical thinkers. He is equally well known as the founder of a religious Order, the constant antagonist of the Jesuits, and the author of the _Five Wounds of the Church_, an appeal for reform whose honest frankness was used by his enemies to deprive him of the cardinal’s hat that had been promised him. His Order still flourishes, his system is still potent, and his memory, honoured everywhere, is almost adored in his native place, Roveredo in the Italian Tyrol. Another philosopher influential on Italian thought was GIOVANNI DOMENICO ROMAGNOSI (1761-1835), whose importance chiefly consists in his application of philosophy to legal and political science, and his clear prevision of the coming deliverance of Italy. No Italian of his age, perhaps, was more thoroughly admirable in every respect than TERENZIO MAMIANI (1799-1885), an approved patriot, a wise statesman, a sound and sober thinker in religion and philosophy, an elegant poet, and a man excellent in every relation of life. With more angularity of character, he would, perhaps, have possessed more creative force, and impressed himself more powerfully on the imagination. The dignified eloquence of his meditative poetry, usually in blank verse, and of his discourses, political or academical, is often very impressive, but the form seems more remarkable than the substance. Like most of the best Italians of his day, he spent his youth in exile, his prime in office, and his old age in study and composition. A good selection from his voluminous writings has been published with a memoir by Giovanni Mestica, the editor of Petrarch.