--both failing to understand its
limitations. The hopes died a natural death, but long afterwards,
reactionary writers attributed all the 'troubles' in Italy to this
estimable British diplomatist. What is not doubtful is, that,
accustomed as they were to being lectured and bullied by foreign
courts, the Italians derived the greatest encouragement from the
openly expressed sympathy of well-known English visitors, whether they
came in an official capacity like Lord Minto, or unofficially like Mr
Cobden, who travelled as a missionary of Free Trade, and was received
with rapture--with which, it is to be feared, Free Trade had little to
do--by the leading Liberals in Italy: Massimo d'Azeglio at Genoa,
Mancini at Naples Cavour and Scialoja at Turin, Minghetti at Bologna,
Ridolfi at Florence, and Manin and Tommaseo at Venice.

Towards the end of 1847, there was a curious shuffling of the cards in
the small states of Lucca and Parma, resulting in much irritation,
which, in an atmosphere so charged with revolutionary electricity, was
not without importance. The dissolute Bourbon prince who reigned in
Lucca, Charles Ludovico, had but one desire, which was to increase his
civil list. He hit upon an English jockey named Ward, who came to
Italy in the service of a German count, and this person he made his
Chancellor of the Exchequer. By various luminous strokes, Ward
furthered his Sovereign's object without much increasing the taxation,
and when matters began to grow complicated, and here, too, a cry was
raised for a Constitution (which had been solemnly guaranteed to the
people of Lucca at the Congress of Vienna, but had never been heard of
since), he proposed the sale of the Duchy off-hand to Tuscany, with
which it would, in any case, be united, when, on the death of the
ex-Empress Marie-Louise, the Duchy of Parma devolved on the Duke of
Lucca. At the same time, by a prior agreement, a district of Tuscany
called the Lunigiana was consigned, one-half to the Duchess of Parma,
and the other to the Duke of Modena. The indignation of the
population, which was made, by force, subject to the Duke of Modena,
was intense, and the whole transaction of handing about Italians to
suit the pleasure of princes, or to obey the articles of forgotten
treaties, reminded the least sensitive of the everyday opprobrium of
their lot.

The bargain with Tuscany had been struck only eight days when
Marie-Louise died--unlamented, since the latter years of