Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/52

62 it; by contentions which became sanguinary war; private family quarrels brought scenes of war into the district of the city, and they fought for life and death in the streets of Florence, from one ten years to another; and thus sunk, after flourishing for two centuries, the Florentine republic, which the princes of trade, the Medici, conducted to its higher perfection and to its fall. After this, Florence was ruled by foreign princes, and became, together with Tuscany, a ball tossed about at the will of foreign rulers. Its republican liberty was fettered under an absolute government. It was its good fortune that this government was a comparatively mild one, the mildest, as it is asserted, in Italy. It is so, at the present moment, and the princes of the house of Austria are said to have been, and still to be, paternally-minded rulers of the country. Notwithstanding, the Tuscan people have never ceased to long for the former independence, and to endeavor to regain it.

Tuscany belongs to the Italian states, which were unsuccessful in their struggle for liberty in 1848, and is now, as I have heard from experienced men, more than formerly subjected to the caprices of the government. This government is neither loved nor obeyed from love, but rather from fear,—therefore imperfectly. Nevertheless the present Grand Duke is a mild, rather than a severe ruler, and Tuscany, during the latter half of this century, has variously advanced in the direction which is the peculiar excellence of our time. Already had the French administration under Napoleon the Great produced beneficial reforms in the laws and constitution, as