Joseph Mazzini was born in the Via Lomellina at Genoa on June 22, 1805. His father was a doctor of some repute and Professor of Anatomy at the University, a democrat in creed and life, who gave much of his time to unpaid service of the poor; at home affectionate and loved, though sometimes hard and imperious. His mother, to whom in after life he bore a strong resemblance, was a capable and devoted woman, who had little of the weakness of an Italian mother, and brought up her children to bear the brunt of life; with strong interest in the mighty movements that were remoulding Europe at the time, a mordant critic of governors and governments inside the four walls of her house. It was a happy home, and "Pippo" grew up the darling of his parents and three sisters, a delicate, sensitive, gentle child, quick and insistent to learn despite his father's fears for his health, and giving precocious proof of brilliant talents. He was nearly nine years old, when the Napoleonic system was shattered, and the Emperor went to Elba. Doubtless, Mazzini heard from his father that Napoleon was Italian born and was going to exile in an Italian island. The shock of the downfall was felt at Genoa, for the proud city, to which Lord William Bentinck had promised in the name of England its ancient independence, learnt that "republics were no longer fashionable," and saw itself helplessly made over to the alien rule of Piedmont. Bitterly the Genoese chafed at the traffic of their liberties, and we may be sure that there was republican talk in Mazzini's home, which sank into the mind of the thoughtful child. He himself mentions four influences that turned his boyish mind to democracy: his parents' uniform courtesy to every rank of life; the reminiscences of the French republican wars in the talk at home; some numbers of an old Girondist paper, which his father kept half hidden, for fear of the police, behind his medical books; and--more than all these, probably--the classics that he read under his Latin tutor. "The history of Greece and Rome," wrote a fellow-student, "the only thing taught us with any care at school, was little else than a constant libel upon monarchy, and a panegyric upon the democratic form of government." Like many another boy of his time who had for school exercises to declaim the praises of Cato and the Bruti, he came to regard republics as the appointed homes of virtue. It was the unintended fruit of the classical training, which the despotic governments of the time fostered to keep their youth innocent of any itch for innovation.