Letter V.Practices of the Italian Courts.Florence,May12, 1835.Night before last, a man-child was born to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and yesterday was a day of great rejoicing in consequence. The five hundred bells of Florence kept up a horrid ringing through the day, and in the evening the public edifices and many private houses were illuminated. To-day and to-morrow the rejoicings continue, and in the mean time the galleries and museums are closed, lest idle people should amuse themselves rationally. The Tuscans are pleased with the birth of an heir to the Dukedom, first because the succession is likely to be kept in a good sort of a family, and secondly because for want of male children it would have reverted to the House of Austria, and the province would have been governed by a foreigner. I am glad of it, also, for the sake of the poor Tuscans, who are a mild people, and if they must be under a despotism, deserve to live under a good-natured one.An Austrian Prince, if he were to govern Tuscany as the Emperor governs the Lombardo-Venetian territory, would introduce a more just and efficient system of administering the laws between man and man, but at the same time a more barbarous severity to political offenders. I saw at Volterra, last spring, four persons who were condemned at Florence for an alleged conspiracy against the state. They were walking with instruments of music in their hands, on the top of the fortress, which commands an extensive view of mountain, vale, and sea, including the lower Val d'Arno, and reaching to Leghorn, and even to Corsica. They were well-dressed, and I was assured their personal comfort was attended to. A different treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tuscany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In all the other provinces a harsher system prevails. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the minds of a discontented people.The royal family of Naples kill people by way of amusement. Prince Charles, a brother of the king, sometime in the month of April last, found an old man cutting myrtle twigs on some of the royal hunting-grounds, of which he has the superintendence. He directed his attendants to seize the offender and tie him to a tree, and when they had done this ordered them to shoot him. This they refused, upon which he took a loaded musket from the hands of one of them, and with the greatest deliberation shot him dead upon the spot. His Royal Highness soon after set out for Rome to amuse himself with the ceremonies of the Holy Week, and to figure at the balls given by Torlonia and other Roman nobles, where he signalized himself by his attentions to the English ladies.Of the truth of the story I have related I have been assured by several respectable persons in Naples. About the middle of May I was at the spot where the murder was said to have been committed. It was on the borders of the lake of Agnano. We reached it by a hollow winding road, cut deep through the hills and rocks thousands of years ago. It was a pretty and solitary spot; a neat pavilion of the royal family stood on the shore, and the air was fragrant with the blossoms of the white clover and the innumerable flowers which the soil of Italy, for a short season before the summer heats and drought, pours forth so profusely. The lake is evidently the crater of an old volcano: it lies in a perfect bowl of hills, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical decomposition in the earth below has not yet ceased. Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the famousGrotto del Cane, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a little money from the foreigners who come to visit it. You may be sure I was careful not to trim any of the myrtles with my penknife.But to return to Tuscany—it is after all little better than an Austrian province, like the other countries of Italy. The Grand Duke is a near relative of the Emperor; he has the rank of colonel in the Austrian service, and a treaty of offense and defense obliges him to take part in the wars of Austria to the extent of furnishing ten thousand soldiers. It is well understood that he is watched by the agents of the Austrian Government here, who form a sort of high police, to which he and his cabinet are subject, and that he would not venture upon any measure of national policy, nor even displace or appoint a minister, without the consent of Metternich.The birth of a son to the Grand Duke has been signalized, I have just learned, by a display of princely munificence. Five thousand crowns have been presented to the Archbishop who performed the ceremony of christening the child; the servants of the ducal household have received two months' wages, in addition to their usual salary; five hundred young women have received marriage portions of thirty crowns each; all the articles of property at the great pawnbroking establishments managed by goverment, pledged for a less sum than four livres, have been restored to the owners without payment; and finally, all persons confined for larceny and other offences of a less degree than homicide and other enormous crimes, have been liberated and turned loose upon society again. The Grand Duke can well afford to be generous, for from a million and three hundred thousand people he draws, by taxation, four millions of crowns annually, of which a million only is computed to be expended in the military and civil expenses of his government. The remainder is of course applied to keeping up the state of a prince and to the enriching of his family. He passes, you know, for one of the richest potentates in Europe.
Night before last, a man-child was born to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and yesterday was a day of great rejoicing in consequence. The five hundred bells of Florence kept up a horrid ringing through the day, and in the evening the public edifices and many private houses were illuminated. To-day and to-morrow the rejoicings continue, and in the mean time the galleries and museums are closed, lest idle people should amuse themselves rationally. The Tuscans are pleased with the birth of an heir to the Dukedom, first because the succession is likely to be kept in a good sort of a family, and secondly because for want of male children it would have reverted to the House of Austria, and the province would have been governed by a foreigner. I am glad of it, also, for the sake of the poor Tuscans, who are a mild people, and if they must be under a despotism, deserve to live under a good-natured one.
An Austrian Prince, if he were to govern Tuscany as the Emperor governs the Lombardo-Venetian territory, would introduce a more just and efficient system of administering the laws between man and man, but at the same time a more barbarous severity to political offenders. I saw at Volterra, last spring, four persons who were condemned at Florence for an alleged conspiracy against the state. They were walking with instruments of music in their hands, on the top of the fortress, which commands an extensive view of mountain, vale, and sea, including the lower Val d'Arno, and reaching to Leghorn, and even to Corsica. They were well-dressed, and I was assured their personal comfort was attended to. A different treatment is the fate of the state prisoners who languish in the dungeons of Austria. In Tuscany no man's life is taken for any offense whatever, and banishment is a common sentence against those who are deemed dangerous or intractable subjects. In all the other provinces a harsher system prevails. In Sardinia capital executions for political causes are frequent, and long and mysterious detentions are resorted to, as in Lombardy, with a view to strike terror into the minds of a discontented people.
The royal family of Naples kill people by way of amusement. Prince Charles, a brother of the king, sometime in the month of April last, found an old man cutting myrtle twigs on some of the royal hunting-grounds, of which he has the superintendence. He directed his attendants to seize the offender and tie him to a tree, and when they had done this ordered them to shoot him. This they refused, upon which he took a loaded musket from the hands of one of them, and with the greatest deliberation shot him dead upon the spot. His Royal Highness soon after set out for Rome to amuse himself with the ceremonies of the Holy Week, and to figure at the balls given by Torlonia and other Roman nobles, where he signalized himself by his attentions to the English ladies.
Of the truth of the story I have related I have been assured by several respectable persons in Naples. About the middle of May I was at the spot where the murder was said to have been committed. It was on the borders of the lake of Agnano. We reached it by a hollow winding road, cut deep through the hills and rocks thousands of years ago. It was a pretty and solitary spot; a neat pavilion of the royal family stood on the shore, and the air was fragrant with the blossoms of the white clover and the innumerable flowers which the soil of Italy, for a short season before the summer heats and drought, pours forth so profusely. The lake is evidently the crater of an old volcano: it lies in a perfect bowl of hills, and the perpetual escape of gas, bubbling up through the water, shows that the process of chemical decomposition in the earth below has not yet ceased. Close by, in the side of the circular hill that surrounds the lake, stands the famousGrotto del Cane, closed with a door to enable the keeper to get a little money from the foreigners who come to visit it. You may be sure I was careful not to trim any of the myrtles with my penknife.
But to return to Tuscany—it is after all little better than an Austrian province, like the other countries of Italy. The Grand Duke is a near relative of the Emperor; he has the rank of colonel in the Austrian service, and a treaty of offense and defense obliges him to take part in the wars of Austria to the extent of furnishing ten thousand soldiers. It is well understood that he is watched by the agents of the Austrian Government here, who form a sort of high police, to which he and his cabinet are subject, and that he would not venture upon any measure of national policy, nor even displace or appoint a minister, without the consent of Metternich.
The birth of a son to the Grand Duke has been signalized, I have just learned, by a display of princely munificence. Five thousand crowns have been presented to the Archbishop who performed the ceremony of christening the child; the servants of the ducal household have received two months' wages, in addition to their usual salary; five hundred young women have received marriage portions of thirty crowns each; all the articles of property at the great pawnbroking establishments managed by goverment, pledged for a less sum than four livres, have been restored to the owners without payment; and finally, all persons confined for larceny and other offences of a less degree than homicide and other enormous crimes, have been liberated and turned loose upon society again. The Grand Duke can well afford to be generous, for from a million and three hundred thousand people he draws, by taxation, four millions of crowns annually, of which a million only is computed to be expended in the military and civil expenses of his government. The remainder is of course applied to keeping up the state of a prince and to the enriching of his family. He passes, you know, for one of the richest potentates in Europe.