Heroes of Modern Europe Part 16

Mazzini and Garibaldi receive once more the respect that poverty stripped from them when they led a forlorn cause and gave up home and country. Earthly admiration came too late to console them for the ills of exile and the loss of their beloved, but they both knew that a struggle had not been vain which would leave Italy free. Romance forgets these sons of the South and their brief taste of popular glory.

Youth looks further back for idols placed on pinnacles of tradition, despising shabby modern garb and loving the blood-stained suit of armour.

Rousseau has risen triumphant above the strife of tongues that would dispute his claims to the heroic because his life was marred and incomplete. He has credit now for a fierce impersonal love of truth and purity. He is a great teacher and a great philosopher, though none ever placed him among the heroic in action or in character. His cynical contemporary, Voltaire, still has some veil of vague obscurity which hides his brilliance from the world apt to reckon him a mere scoffer and destroyer of beliefs. He has more profound faith perhaps than many who took up the sword to defend religion, but he covered his spirit of tolerance with many cloaks of mockery, ashamed to be a hero in conventional trappings, eager to win recognition for his wit rather than immortality for the courage of the convictions he so firmly held.

Not of equal stature are the heroes looming through the curtain Fate drops before each scene of the world's drama when another play begins.

There were selfish aims sometimes in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of the patriotic, worldly ambitions in the Reformers, the l.u.s.t of persecution {232} in the Saints. Yet these great protagonists of history are easy to distinguish among the crowd of actors who have played their parts.

Their words grip the attention, their actions are fraught with real significance, and it is they who win applause when the play is at an end.