from the Revolution, there were very few who dared to
praise as a whole the wonderful intellectual work of the
eighteenth century, which nevertheless had paved the
way for the Revolution and for the acceptance of the
bourgeois social order: the majority took refuge in a
cautious opportunism, confining themselves to taking
over from the eighteenth century its hostility towards
the Jesuits, Montesquieu's constitutional principles, the
defence of private property from the encroachments of
State control, and other ideas of a similar sort that were
far from dangerous and indeed conservative in their
nature. Italy, during this time, produced Manzoni
Inni Sacri, Silvio Pellico Doveri degli uomini and the
philosophical writings of Rosmini and Gioberti;
Romagnosi and Melchiorre Gioia, if not actually
abused, were forgotten; Giuseppe Ferrari was regarded
as an eccentric and misguided thinker; while Carlo Cattaneo
remained apart from the main stream of
history and thought.

Giuseppe Mazzini intellectual development, from
his fifteenth to his thirtieth year, took place in this
atmosphere of romanticism. After a brief period of
youthful unbelief, he, too, was caught up for life by the
wave of mysticism, which carried all before it and
seemed destined to sweep into oblivion the prodigious
intellectual achievements of the eighteenth century.

-14-