Chapter XLIX, of Cassells Illustrated History of England, Volume 9 page 3

The next period of Mazzini's life was full of action, and of stirring scenes. He had a share in all those plans and schemes which turned Italian politics for years into a brilliant series of escapades and surprises. When Pius IX. was made Pope, and showed signs of favouring the Liberal cause, Mazzini put himself at the head of the party who saw in Pio Nono the champion of a united Italy; his letter from London to the newly-elected Pope strengthened Pius IX.'s position as nothing else could have done. The Liberals soon found, however, that there was no real tie between them and the Papacy, and the alliance, begun so impulsively, was soon a thing of the past. On the time when Italy made her first formidable attempt to throw off the rule of the Austrian and the Bourbon, when Garibaldi came to the front, and the brilliant short-lived experiment of a Roman Republic was tried, with Mazzini, as one of a triumvirate, at the head of it, we have no room to dwell. Italian politics became a kind of romance, and Mazzini and Garibaldi were the heroes of it. It was Mazzini who defended Rome against the French allies of the Pope in 1848; and twelve years later, after various intervals of storm and calm, it was Mazzini who, behind the scenes, planned and organised the Sicilian expedition which Garibaldi and his red-shirts carried out.

Then came a time when the world said that Liberal Italy had no more to ask, that all save Rome was theirs, and that the dream of a united Italy was realised in the spread of the Sardinian government over Italy.

Mazzini and his friends, however, found it hard to accept a realisation of their hopes so different from that which they had hoped to gain. Italy, most of them thought, could never be either free or united till she had a republican form of government. In Mazzini at least such a theory, and the attitude it caused him to take up towards the Government of Victor Emmanuel, were consistent and natural enough. An Italian Republic, stretching from the Alps to Cape Spartivento, had been the dream of his whole life; and when a man thinks to grasp his ideal, he is impatient of those who bid him be content with what he profoundly believes to be second best. His friends, however, deny that he was as uncompromisingly opposed to the new system as was commonly reported. One of them even says expressly that, " as the price of seeing an Italy strong enough to live her own life even under a monarchical form of government, he willingly renounced the far dearer dream he had ever cherished of a united Italian Republic."

He renounced it, at any rate, so far that he withdrew from any active share in politics, and let affairs take their own way. Early in 1872, after many comparatively quiet years in his native land, he went to live at Geneva, and died a few months afterwards, worn into premature old age by the many excitements and vicissitudes of his eventful life.