are we," said Jacopo Ruffini to his fellow-conspirators at Genoa, "five young, very young men, with but limited means, and we are called on to do nothing less than overthrow an established government. I have a presentiment that few of us will live to see the final results of our labours, but the seed we have sown will shoot forth after us, and the bread we have cast upon the waters will be found again." Mazzini might well be sanguine, with men like these behind him. He looked to his literature to do the rest. The journal of Young Italy was, as he described it, "a collection of political pamphlets," each of the infrequent and irregular numbers consisting of a hundred to two hundred pages, badly printed on bad paper. Later on, it was set up by French compositors, who knew no Italian, and whose misprints gave him infinite concern. He himself did most of the writing. It was terribly diffusive often and wanting in precision, but his articles redeem their literary defects by the glow of noble purpose, that made them thrill their readers, and gave them a potency, that perhaps no other political writings of the century attained to. Most of the remaining articles came from his fellow-workers. Mazzini tried to persuade Sismondi to contribute, but the historian, though sympathetic, was too opposed to some of his teaching to respond. Louis Napoleon, drawn by a fellow-feeling for conspiracy and scenting a chance to preach Bonapartism, sent an essay on Military Honour, with the thesis that soldiers are not bound by their oath to act against a revolution. Mazzini consented to insert it with many emendations, which apparently left little of its Bonapartist intention; but for some reason that does not appear, it was not published. The journal had a small circulation, and only reached a limited number of young educated men; it was indeed too literary for popular consumption. There seems to have been a larger demand for rules and instructions and popular tracts written by Gustavo Modena, afterwards to become one of the most famous Italian tragedians of his day. At all events there was a considerable contraband of printed matter, smuggled to Genoa or Leghorn or across the passes into Piedmont, inside barrels of pitch and pumice stone or bales of drapery or packages of sausages. So great became the demand, that secret presses were set up in Italy and the Ticino to supplement the output from Marseilles.