I N 1847 Mazzini evaluated the fruits of his own work
as amounting to one-fifth of what his movement had
hoped. He could not have made a different estimate
after 1870.

To produce even this fifth, other forces that were not
in sympathy with his own thought and action had
powerfully contributed. In so complex a system of
cause and effect as that of the Italian Risorgimento, it
would be ingenuous to attribute responsibility to
Mazzini for the whole of the results achieved.

Many other writers had played their part with
Mazzini in fostering now one, now another, of the
elements that go to make up Italian national sentiment.
From this point of view, not only Dante, Petrarch and
Machiavelli, but Alfieri, Foscolo, Manzoni, indeed, all
Italian literature down the centuries, had prepared the
minds of Italians for the conquest of unity. But so far
as practical action was concerned, it is certain that
Mazzini, during his years of exile, was ill-informed on
the real conditions of the country in which he was to
operate; he was too ready to deceive himself as to the

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