g a case in point. It is but a few weeks since
the good people of Lucca, filled with new wine and bright notions of
liberty, compelled their sovereign to abdicate. There is no denying that
he had no other course open to him; for if the Grand Duke of Tuscany
could venture to accord popular privileges, supported as he was by a
very strong body of nobles, whose possessions will always assure them
a great interest in the state, the little kingdom of Lucca had few, if
any, such securities. Its sovereign must either rule or be ruled. Now,
he had not energy of character for the one--he did not like the other.
Austria refused to aid him--not wishing, probably, to add to the
complication of Ferrara; and so he abdicated. Now comes _le commencement
du fin_. The Luccese gained the day: they expelled the Duke--they
organised a national guard--they illuminated--they protested, cockaded,
and--are ruined! Without trade, or any of its resources, this little
capital, like almost all those of the German duchies, lived upon "the
Court." The sovereign was not only the fount of honour, but of wealth!
Through his household flowed the only channel by which industry was
nurtured: it was his court and his dependants whose wants employed the
active heads and hands of the entire city. The Duke is gone--the palace
closed--the courtyard even already half grass-grown! Not an equipage is
to be heard or seen; not even a footman in a court livery rides past;
and all the recompense for this is the newly conferred privileges
of liberty, to a people who recognise in freedom, not a new bond of
obligation, but an unbridled license of action. The spirit of our times
is, however, against this. The inspired grocers, who form the Guardia
Civica, are our only guides now; it will be curious enough to see where
they will lead us.

When thinking of Italian liberty, or Unity, for that is the phrase in
vogue, I am often reminded of the Irish priest who was supposed by his
parishioners to possess an unlimited sway over the seasons, and who,
when hard-pushed to exercise it, at last declared his readiness to
procure any kind of weather that three farmers would agree upon, well
knowing, the while, how diversity of interest must for ever prevent
a common demand. This is precisely the case. An Italian kingdom to
comprise the whole Peninsula would be impossible. The Lombards have no
interests in common with the Neapolitans. Venice is less the sister than
the rival of Genoa.