had to deal
with a people such as Smollett describes. Conservative to the core,
subservient to their religious directors, the "stupid party" in
Florence proved themselves clever enough to retard the process of
enlightenment by methods at which even Smollett himself might have
stood amazed. The traveller touches an interesting source of biography
when he refers to the Englishman called Acton, formerly an East India
Company captain, now commander of the Emperor's Tuscan Navy, consisting
of "a few frigates." This worthy was the old commodore whom Gibbon
visited in retirement at Leghorn. The commodore was brother of Gibbon's
friend, Dr. Acton, who was settled at Besancon, where his noted son,
afterwards Sir John Acton, was born in 1736. Following in the footsteps
of his uncle the commodore, who became a Catholic, Smollett tells us,
and was promoted Admiral of Tuscany, John Acton entered the Tuscan
Marine in 1775.

[Sir John Acton's subsequent career belongs to history. His origin made
him an expert on naval affairs, and in 1776 he obtained some credit for
an expedition which he commanded against the Barbary pirates. In 1778
Maria Carolina of Naples visited her brother Leopold at Florence, and
was impressed by Acton's ugliness and reputation for exceptional
efficiency. Her favourite minister, Prince Caramanico, persuaded the
Grand Duke, Leopold, to permit Acton to exchange into the Neapolitan
service, and reorganize the navy of the southern kingdom. This actually
came to pass, and, moreover, Acton played his cards so well that he
soon engrossed the ministries of War and Finance, and after the death
of Caracciolo, the elder, also that of Foreign Affairs. Sir William
Hamilton had a high opinion of the" General," soon to become
Field-Marshal. He took a strong part in resistance to revolutionary
propaganda, caused to be built the ships which assisted Nelson in 1795,
and proved himself one of the most capable bureaucrats of the time. But
the French proved too strong, and Napoleon was the cause of his
disgrace in 1804. In that year, by special dispensation from the Pope,
he married his niece, and retired to Palermo, where he died on 12th
August 1811.]

Let loose in the Uffizi Gallery Smollett shocked his sensitive
contemporaries by his freedom from those sham ecstasies which have too
often dogged the footsteps of the virtuosi. Like Scott or Mark Twain at
a later date Smollett was perfectly ready to admire anything he could
und