It is, nevertheless, difficult to conceive a man of his solid sense and practical sagacity, long acquiescing in the mummery of a Carbonarist conclave, and submitting to be known to the initiated as Thrasybulus or Archimedes. He represents, however, all the more faithfully, the indignation of the generous youth who had grown up under the comparative liberty of Napoleon’s sway, and who, on attaining maturity, found themselves deprived by political changes in other countries, of their birthright in their own; forbidden to call or think themselves Italians; and with every avenue in life closed against them, unless they consented to become instruments of a cruel and senseless despotism. As this generation has passed away other aspects of the Italian question have come into greater prominence; the stately tree of Italian unity has covered the soil in which it originally took root. Even more as a picture of contemporary national feeling, than as an exposure of the fraud and cruelty of an extinct tyranny, is Panizzi’s youthful work, worthy of being rescued from the oblivion to which he for so long condemned it. Deeply interesting as are these recollections of the struggle for freedom in Italy, and intimately as they are connected with the life of Panizzi, than whom no stauncher advocate for the liberty of his country ever existed, it must not be forgotten that the object we have immediately in view is to refer to these exciting events so far only as Panizzi himself was concerned with them, and not to allow ourselves to be carried away by our subject beyond the limits necessary to elucidate the object we have at heart. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] CHAPTER II _Flight; Lugano; Arrival in London; Santa-Rosa; Sentence of Death; Liverpool; Roscoe and Friends; Letter to the Tax-Gatherer and Inspector of Finances; Miss Martin; Lectures._