he capital of Tuscany. But he was destined only to
further disappointment. The Grand Duke, Peter Leopold, the practical,
economical, priest-hating, paternally-meddlesome, bustlingly and
tyrannically-reforming son of Maria Theresa, was not the man to console
so mediaeval and antiquated and unphilosophical a thing as a Stuart. The
arrival, the presence of Charles Edward in Florence, was absolutely
ignored by the Court, and no invitations of any sort were sent out
either to King Charles III. or to the Count of Albany. Except the
Corsinis, old friends of the Stuarts, who had known Charles Edward in
his brilliant boyhood, and who politely placed at his disposal their
half-suburban palace or casino, opening on to the famous Oricellari
Gardens, no one seemed inclined to pay any particular respects to the
new-comers. There was, indeed, no pressure from the Government (as had
been the case in Rome), and the Florentine nobles, whose exclusiveness
and pride had been considerably diminished by the inroad of swaggering
Lorenese favourites under the Grand Duke Francis, and of cut and dry
Austrian officials under his son Peter Leopold, showed a sort of
lukewarm willingness to receive the Count and Countess of Albany on
equal terms into their society. But Charles Edward wanted royal honours;
he forbade his wife demeaning her queenly position by returning the
visits of Florentine ladies, and the nobles of the Tuscan Court
gradually left the would-be King and Queen of England to their own
resources.

These resources, with the exception of receiving such few visitors as
might care to know them on unequal terms, and a dogged pushing into
notice in every place, promenade, theatre, or nobles' club, where no
invitation was required, these resources consisted on the part of
Charles Edward in the old, old consoler, the flask of Cyprus or bottle
of brandy, in the even grosser pleasures of excessive eating, the
indefatigable, assiduous courtship of his young wife, and the occasional
rows with his servants and acquaintances. The Count and Countess of
Albany appear to have inhabited the Casino Corsini until 1777, when they
sent for the greater part of the furniture of their Roman house, and
established themselves in a palace, bought of the Guadagnis and later
sold to the Duke of San Clemente, between the now suppressed Porta San
Sebastiano and the Garden of St. Mark's. In both these places Sir Horace
Mann, the vigilant Minister to the Tuscan Court