The
necessity, it is to be hoped, will educate the men, by making them
work. It is not this, I believe, which still keeps your heart so
melancholy; for I seem to read the same melancholy in your answer to
the Roman assembly, You speak of "few and late years," but some full
ones still remain. A century is not needed, nor should the same man,
in the same form of thought, work too long on an age. He would mould
and bind it too much to himself. Better for him to die and return
incarnated to give the same truth on yet another side. Jesus of
Nazareth died young; but had he not spoken and acted as much truth as
the world could bear in his time? A frailty, a perpetual short-coming,
motion in a curve-line, seems the destiny of this earth.
The excuse awaits us elsewhere; there must be one,--for it is true,
as said Goethe, "care is taken that the tree grow not up into the
heavens." Men like you, appointed ministers, must not be less earnest
in their work; yet to the greatest, the day, the moment is all their
kingdom, God takes care of the increase.
Farewell! For your sake I could wish at this moment to be an Italian
and a man of action; but though I am an _American_, I am not even
_a woman of action_; so the best I can do is to pray with the
whole heart, "Heaven bless dear Mazzini!--cheer his heart, and give
him worthy helpers to carry out his holy purposes.
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