THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
affectation, all artificial solemnity. At least that was the impression made upon me. I never observed in him any suggestion of cynicism in his judgment of men and things—that cynicism in which many revolutionary characters pleased themselves. The petty and usually ridiculous rivalries among the leaders of the exiles did not seem to touch him; and discord and quarreling among those who should have stood and worked together, instead of eliciting sharp and offensive criticism on his part, only called from him expressions of sincere and painful regret. The revolution he aimed at was not merely the attainment of certain popular rights, not a mere change in the constitution of the state, not the mere liberation of his countrymen from foreign rule, not the mere reunion of all Italy in a national bond; it rather signified to him the elevation of the liberated people to higher moral aims of life. There vibrated a truthful and noble tone in his conception of human relations, in the modest self-denying simplicity of his character and his life, in the unbounded self-sacrifice and self-denial which he imposed upon himself and demanded of others. Since 1839 he had passed a large part of his life as an exile in London, and in the course of this time he had established relations of intimate friendship with some English families. It was undoubtedly owing to the genuineness of his sentiments, the noble simplicity of his nature, and his unselfish devotion to his cause, not less than to his brilliant personal qualities, that in some of those families a real Mazzini-cult had developed which sometimes showed itself capable of great sacrifices.
The historic traditions of his people, as well as the circumstance that to the end of liberating his fatherland he had to fight against foreign rule, made him a professional conspirator. As a young man he had belonged to the “Carbonari,” and then there followed—instigated and conducted by him—one conspir-
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