Could Manzoni have meant such words to speak other than of the Austrians and Bourbons who were grinding Italians into servitude? Could his marvelous meter, which has been said in its "plunging" to suggest a charge of horses, have been meant other than to drive his countrymen to self assertion? Manzoni was patriot as well as artist, and read his times with no unskilful eye. When Victor Emmanuel visited Milan in 1859 he said that he should like to meet the poet, and, when told that the latter was ill, declared that he would go to him. Manzoni, however, would not hear of this, and as soon as he was able called upon the King. The sovereign's marks of regard and respect overwhelmed the poet. Later he said of the meeting, "I see in the character of the King the intervention of Providence. He is exactly the sovereign that circumstances require to accomplish the resurrection of Italy. He has rectitude, courage, incorruptible honesty, and disinterestedness; he seeks not glory or fortune for himself, but for his country. He is so simple, never caring to appear great, that he does not meet the admiration of those who seek to find in princes and heroes theatrical actions and grandiloquent words. He is natural because he is true, and this makes his enemies say that he is wanting in regal majesty. To found Italian unity he has risked his throne, and his life."
Manzoni's prophecies came true and he himself had no small part in accomplishing that great end towards which so many men of diverse forces worked. As well as king and statesman, warrior and prophet, the man of letters taught his people how to find their independence.
Gioberti's signal gift to his countrymen was his great book, "II Primato d'Italia," a statement of the causes of Italy's early primacy among European nations, and a philosophic theory for her regeneration. Like Savonarola he flayed the vices of his time and preached redemption through Christian living, but, unlike the great Fra, he undertook to teach that the Church was no less fitted to be the seat of statecraft than of religion. It was this that gained him the ear of Rome as well as that of Piedmont, and made it seem for a moment as though he had found the solution of Italy's troubles.