Anxious to enlist in his cause the finest talents of the day, Mazzini invited many persons of acknowledged reputation and ability to contribute to his journal; among them the venerable and justly celebrated Sismondi, author of the “History of the Italian Republics,” and many other works of importance. Sismondi willingly complied, for he loved the high-minded character of the young Italian, and was glad to share in his literary labors, in order that he might be able occasionally to rein in, with a gentle yet judicious hand, the too impetuous spirit which, in fearlessly endeavoring to overleap every obstacle that stood before it, overlooked the destruction that might await an error of calculation: he therefore immediately replied, “If by my name, my example, I can be useful to that Italy which I love as if it were my own country, which I shall never cease to serve, to the very utmost of my ability, and for which I shall never cease to hope, then most willingly do I promise you my co-operation.” The generous ardor of the Genevese _Economiste_ was not more pleasing to behold than the filial deference of the young republican; for Sismondi spared neither remonstrance nor advice, where he thought the interests of his young colleague, or of the sacred cause in which he was embarked, likely to be endangered by his precipitancy. But neither arguments nor advice had any power over the fixed idea in Mazzini’s mind that Italian liberty was to spring forth from the Italian people, and that Italy, formerly free in her numerous republics, would, after five hundred years of slavery, become free again in one, alone and indivisible. Meanwhile his journal extended its circulation and its influence: supplied through the channel of an active correspondence with abundant information of all that was going on in the peninsula, he astonished and excited the public more and more every day, by the facts he laid before them; he unvailed the cruelties of the tribunals in Romagna, of the government in Modena, of the police in Naples; he brought forth the unhappy prisoners from their cells, and portrayed them in every varied attitude of their sufferings, with a vividness that thrilled the compassionate with horror, and worked the ardent up to rage. It would be difficult for us in our own present state of _press_ and _post_, to imagine the possibility of our counties remaining days and weeks in ignorance of what was passing among each other. Yet so it was in the Italian provinces: under the lynx-eyed vigilance of government officials and spies, the public journals contained little more than details of church ceremonies, or the local affairs of petty municipalities: pamphlets were unknown, and news of a political kind traveled slowly and uncertainly from mouth to mouth, always in dread of some listening ear being ready to catch the words as they floated in the air. Hence the transactions in Romagna and Naples were long unknown to