Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1844. Excerpt: . LETTER XIV. The Carbonari. Of late years there has been a spirit in Italy tending towards improvement; this, perhaps, is less outwardly developed in Florence than elsewhere, yet here also it exists. Politically and materially considered, Tuscany is looked upon as the best governed and happiest Italian state, but in some respects this very circumstance has kept back its inhabitants.

The foreign power that rules Lombardy exciting undisguised hatred, and the misrule of the Popes being beyond all question quite intolerable-- the people of those states are in avowed opposition to government, while in Tuscany there is little to complain of, beyond the torpedo influence of a system of things that undeviatingly tends towards the deterioration. The reign of Leopold I. was the golden age of Florence. He was grandduke at a time when a good sovereign was the dearest wish of a people, and the notion of governing themselves was not looked upon even as desirable. The French came next, and the tendency of their government was always to destroy the nationality of any people subdued by them. But this had a certain good effect in Italy. The curse of that country is its divisions, --while the other nations of Europe, in the middle ages, became divided into feudal tenures, and possessed by nobles, who, unable to maintain their independence, at last became mere courtiers of an absolute monarch, -- Italy was divided into municipal republics, or small states, --the mutual rivalry and quarrels of which were the fatal causes that France and Spain disputed alternately, making Italy their field of battle, and Italian met Italian in opposing fight; and Pisa was willing to abase Florence; and Bologna gloried in the misfortunes of Ferrara: --the union of the whole of northern Italy under the French was the first circ.