sure, our writers of the first rank, such as Manzoni and Rosmini, had no
historical connection with Mazzini; but they had the same general
tendency as Mazzini. Working along diverging lines, they all came
together on the essential point: that true life is not the life which
is, but also the life which ought to be. It was a conviction essentially
religious in character, essentially anti-materialistic.


III

This religious and idealistic manner of looking at life, so
characteristic of the _Risorgimento_, prevails even beyond the heroic
age of the revolution and the establishment of the Kingdom. It
survives down through Ricasoli, Lanza, Sella and Minghetti, down, that
is, to the occupation of Rome and the systemization of our national
finances. The parliamentary overturn of 1876, indeed, marks not the
end, but rather an interruption, on the road that Italy had been
following since the beginning of the century. The outlook then
changed, and not by the capriciousness or weakness of men, but by a
necessity of history which it would be idiotic in our day to deplore.
At that time the fall of the Right, which had ruled continuously
between 1861 and 1876, seemed to most people the real conquest of
freedom.

To be sure the Right cannot be accused of too great scruple in
respecting the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution; but the real
truth was that the Right conceived liberty in a sense directly
opposite to the notions of the Left. The Left moved from the
individual to the State: the Right moved from the State to the
individual. The men of the left thought of "the people" as merely the