strict in the matter of his presentations. "Oh!" said Hamilton,
"that's what he wants! _A la bonne heure!_ He shall have them all,
rag, tag, and bobtail." And so we returned to the _Saturnia regna_ of
"the good old times," and the Duke was credibly reported to have said
that he "kept the worst drawing-room in Europe." But, of course, His
Highness was thinking of the pockets of his liege Florentine letters
of apartments and tradesmen, and was anxious only to make his city a
favourite place of resort for the gold-bringing foreigners from that
distant and barbarous western isle. The Pope, you see, had the pull
in the matter of gorgeous Church ceremonies, but he couldn't have the
fertilising barbarians dancing in the Vatican once a week!

One more anecdote I must find room for, because it is curiously
illustrative in several ways of those _tempi passati, che non tornano
piu_. Florence was full of refugees from the political rigours of the
papal government, who had for some time past found there an unmolested
refuge. But the aspect of the times was becoming more and more
alarming to Austria, and the _Duchini_, as we called the Sovereigns of
Modena and Parma; and pressure was put on the Duke by the pontifical
government insisting on the demand that these refugees should be given
up by Tuscany. Easy-going Tuscany, not yet in anywise alarmed for
herself, fought off the demand for a while, but was at last driven to
notify her intention of acceding to it. It was in these circumstances
that Massino d'Azeglio came to me one morning, in the garden of our
house in the Via del Giglio--the same in which the poet Milton lodged
when he was in Florence--to which we had by that time moved, and told
me that he wanted me to do something for him. Of course I professed
all readiness, and he went on to tell me of the critical and dangerous
position in which the refugees of whom I have spoken were placed, and
said that I must go to Lord Holland and ask him to give them British