Letter V.

Practices of the Italian Courts.

Florence, May 12, 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.