Mazzini and his companions were tried at Turin by a commission of Senators, embodied for the purpose; they were all acquitted for want of any evidence against them, of evil acts or intentions: nevertheless Mazzini, notwithstanding this virtual acknowledgment of his innocence, was treated with the severity due only to convicted guilt, and detained five months in solitary imprisonment, in the fortress of Savona; a tyrannical act of injustice, not likely to turn the current of his thoughts, or to cure him of his meditative propensities. At length his prison doors were reluctantly opened to him—he was free to depart, but not to remain in Italy; accordingly he took refuge in France, along with a crowd of exiles under similar circumstances, and it was there, in June 1831, that the fruits of his long-nursed musings burst forth, in his address to Charles Albert of Savoy, “_A Carlo Alberto di Savoia un Italiano_,” on the accession of that prince to the throne of Sardinia. This address has been justly termed by Mariotti, “a flash of divine eloquence, such as never before shone over Italy. His companions in misfortune gathered in adoration, and bent before his powerful genius. Ere the year had elapsed, he became the heart and soul of the Italian movement. He was the ruler of a state of his own creation—the king of Young Italy.” Eager to turn his popularity, alike with his abilities, to the best account for his country, Mazzini now established himself at Marseilles, as the editor of a journal to which he gave the name of “_La Giovine Italia_,” as the expression of his favorite theory of intrusting the great cause of Italian liberty to the young, the ardent, the hopeful; and moreover the unpledged and therefore unfettered; rather than to those who, grown old under a timid, temporizing policy, endeavored in vain to disentangle themselves from the net of foreign diplomacy; and who, while they flattered themselves they were endeavoring to rescue their country from slavery, were in fact still themselves the slaves of high-sounding names, and veered round with all the changing views of those who bore them.