patriot, who had devoted his life to his country's freedom.
Mazzini was one of those curious independent men, of passionate sincerity and tremendous energy, who make things very uncomfortable, and who will always be detested by those easygoing people who prefer to accept things as they are so long as their own ease and comfort are not disturbed. His astonishing talents and qualities were balanced by great faults, but they were more faults of judgment than of character. He was very far from perfect. But the perfect man has yet to appear, and if he does appear he will probably be quite intolerable, because there is always something in people's faults which endears them to us. Mazzini was a lonely figure, courageous, humble, and without personal ambition. But he could not work successfully with others, for he would never compromise. He seems to have had peculiar difficulty in translating his thoughts and ideas into action. In fact, running through his whole career, there is a strange contradiction between his lofty ideals, his deep religious beliefs, his noble ambitions, on the one hand, and his petty intrigues, his futile plots, and his false estimate of men, on the other hand. Judged by his writings, he would appear to be a great hero whose moral purpose was an inspiration to the whole world, but whose talents had never been fully developed, because they were neglected for other forms of activity. Judged by his actions, he appears a determined but
