The whole air was full of ideas, very discordant all of them, and vague most of them, of political change.

The governments of the peninsula thought twice, and more than twice, before they would grant permission for the first of these meetings.

Meetings of any kind were objects of fear and mistrust to the rulers.

Those of Tuscany, who were by comparison liberal, and, as known to be such, were more or less objects of suspicion to the Austrian, Roman, and Neapolitan Governments, led the way in giving the permission asked for; and perhaps thought that an assembly of geologists, entomologists, astronomers, and mathematicians might act as a safety valve, and divert men's minds from more dangerous subjects.

But the current of the times was running too strongly to be so diverted, and proved too much for the authorities and for the real men of science, who were, at least some of them, anxious to make the congresses really what they professed to be.
Gradually these meetings became more and more mere social gatherings in outward appearance, and revolutionary propagandist assemblies in reality.