During that time the European nations, excepting England, were governed by more or less weak and timid sovereigns, and it was under their feeble rule that the great republican idea took root and grew, like a cutting from the stricken tree of the French Revolution, planted in the heart of Europe, nurtured in secret, and tended by devoted hands to a new maturity, but destined to ruin in the end, as surely as the parent stock. Those thirty and odd years were a sort of dull season in Europe--an extraordinarily uneventful period, during which the republican idea was growing, and during which the monarchic idea was decaying. Halfway through that time--about 1830--Joseph Mazzini founded the Society of Young Italy, in connection with the other secret societies of Europe, and acquired that enormous influence which even now is associated with his name. Mazzini and Garibaldi meant to make a republic of Italy. The House of Savoy did not at that time dream of a united Italian Kingdom. The most they dared hope was the acquisition of territory on the north by the expulsion of the Austrians. England and circumstances helped the Savoy family in their sudden and astonishing rise of fortune; for at that time Austria was the great military nation of Europe, while France was the naval power second to England, and through the Bourbons, Italy was largely under the influence of Austria. England saw that the creation of an independent friendly power in the Mediterranean would both tend to diminish Austria's strength by land, and would check France in her continued efforts to make the shores of the Mediterranean hers. She therefore encouraged Italy in revolution, and it is generally believed that she secretly furnished enormous sums of money, through Sir James Hudson, minister in Turin, to further the schemes of Mazzini. The profound hatred of Catholics which was so much more marked in England then than now, produced a strong popular feeling there in favour of the revolutionaries, who inveighed against all existing sovereignties in general, but were particularly bitter against the government of the Popes. The revolution thus supported by England, and guided by such men as Mazzini and Garibaldi, made progress. The legendary nature of Rome, as mistress of the world, appealed also to many Italians, and 'Rome' became the catchword of liberty. The situation was similar in other European countries; secret societies were as active, and to the revolutionaries the result seemed as certain.