ng Englishman, as well
as his cool and courageous conduct in a case at the time apparently so
desperate.

Mr. Mather, the father of these youths, immediately left England for
Florence, and, as he passed through London, laid the case before the
foreign minister, as far as the detail had reached him by the letters
of the younger brother, which were handed to the minister. He arrived
at Florence after his son had been three weeks in the hospital; part of
that time in a dangerous state. The kind attention and the great skill
of the medical officers of that magnificent Florentine institution were
doubtless the chief causes of his recovery. The conduct of these young
Englishmen under such trying circumstances has been praised by almost
every political writer who took an interest in the subject, and there
seemed only one opinion throughout the country, that their coolness,
courage, and endurance, under great difficulties and personal dangers,
could not have been surpassed by the bravest and most experienced men.

Lord Palmerston, after the publication of the Official Papers,
on reviewing the whole facts of the case, in a debate upon it in
parliament, declared "that he found much to criticise in almost all the
parties concerned, except Mr. Mather and his sons."*

* House of Commons debate, June 14,1853.

In the route to the hospital, in the occurrences there, as well as in
the account of the outrage, the graphic details by the generous-hearted
Giovanni Pini bring the reader in presence of the cruel and bloody
scene. While ill in hospital, pressed by professing friends, the British
_charge d'affaires_ among them, to authorise proceedings in the Tuscan
law courts, Mr. E. Mather firmly refused his sanction. He at once
elevated the question to its right position by an appeal to the
representative of his country for the redress of an injury done to a
British subject, and for the future protection of British subjects, to
be redressed by the Tuscan government to the satisfaction of that of
Britain, without reference to his own private wrong. His young brother,
before the day had closed, sought out Mr. Scarlett, the British
_charge d'affaires_, and also Prince Lichtenstein, the Austrian
commander-in-chief, taking with him two witnesses to testify to the
exactitude of his statement, and to them he poured out in clear and
emphatic language the story of the outrage committed. The conduct of
these two young Englishmen, without fri