This Prince Governed The Country As Grand Duke From 1765 To 1790,
When He Succeeded His Brother As Emperor, And Left A Name In
History As The Ill-Fated Leopold.
Few more active exponents of
paternal reform are known to history.
But the Grand Duke 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 understand; but he expressly disclaims
pretensions to the nice discernment and delicate sensibility of
the connoisseur. He would never have asked to be left alone with
the Venus de Medicis as a modern art-critic is related to have
asked to be left alone with the Venus of Rokeby. He would have
been at a loss to understand the state of mind of the eminent
actor who thought the situation demanded that he should be
positively bereft of breath at first sight of the Apollo
Belvedere, and panting to regain it, convulsively clutched at the
arm of his companion, with difficulty articulating, "I breathe."
Smollett refused to be hypnotized by the famous Venus discovered
at Hadrian's villa, brought from Tivoli in 1680, and then in the
height of its renown; the form he admired, but condemned the face
and the posture.
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