Mazzini was not a man to give his name to a youth (as Sir Edward was then) at the Foreign Office. He never went there. It is doubtful whether any letter ever came to England bearing his name. He was known among his friends as Mr. Flower or Mr. Silva. When the late William Rathbone Greg wished to see him, he neither knew his name nor where he resided, and his son Percy--who was then writing for a journal of which I was editor--was asked to obtain from me an introduction, and it was only to oblige me that Mazzini consented to see Mr. W. R. Greg. Sir James Graham never opened any letter addressed to Mazzini, for none ever came. He opened letters of other persons, as every Foreign Secretary before him and since has done, in which might be enclosed a communication for Mazzini. Was it conceivable that the Foreign Office, then known to secretly open Mazzini's letters, would be chosen by the Italian exile as a receiving house for his letters, and have communications sent to its care, and addressed in his name? Was it conceivable that Mazzini would go there and announce himself when the Foreign Office was acting as a spy upon his proceedings in the interest of foreign Governments? This authenticated Foreign Office story would be too extravagant for a "penny dreadful," yet not too extravagant, in Sir Edward Hertslet's mind, to be believable by the official world now, and was sent or found its way to Foreign Embassies and Legations for their delectation and information. Yet Sir Edward was not known as a writer of romance, or novels, or theological works, nor a poet, or other dealer in imaginary matters. His book was widely reviewed in England, and nowhere questioned save in the _Sun_ during my term of editorship in 1902. Mazzini preached the doctrine of Association in England when it had no other teacher. Much more may be said of him--but Sir James Stansfeld is dead, and Madame Venturi and Peter Alfred Taylor. Only Jessie White Mario and Professor Masson remain who knew Mazzini well. But this chapter may give the public a better conception than has prevailed of Mazzini's career in England. [Illustration: Mario] CHAPTER XVIII. MAZZINI THE CONSPIRATOR There have been many conspirators, but Mazzini appears to have been the greatest of them all. In one sense, every leader of a forlorn hope is a conspirator. Prevision, calculation of resources, plans of campaign--mostly of an underground kind--are necessary to conspiracy. The struggles of Garrison and Wendell Phillips for the rescue and sustentation of fugitive slaves are well-known instances of underground conspiracy. There the violence of the slave-owner made conspiracy inevitable. In despotic countries, without a free platform and a free press, the choice lies between secret conspiracy and slavery. When Mazzini began to seek the deliverance of Italy he had to confront 600,000 Austrian bayonets. How else could he do it than by conspiracy?