And upon the whole the people were contented. The Tuscan
public was certainly not a "pensive public." They ate their bread not
without due condiment of _compagnatico_,[1] or even their chesnuts in
the more remote and primitive mountain districts, drank their sound
Tuscan wine from the generous big-bellied Tuscan flasks holding three
good bottles, and sang their _stornelli_ in cheerfulness of heart, and
had no craving whatsoever for those few special liberties which were
denied them.
[Footnote 1: Anything to make the bread "go down," as our people
say--a morsel of bacon or sausage, a handful of figs or grapes, or a
bit of cheese.]
_Epicuri de grege porci!_ No progress! Yes, I know all that, and
am not saying what should have been, but what was. There _was_ no
progress! The _contadini_ on the little farm which I came to possess
before I left Tuscany cultivated it precisely after the fashion of
their grandfathers and great-grandfathers, and strenuously resisted
any suggestion that it could, should, or might be cultivated in any
other way. But my _contadino_ inhabited a large and roomy _casa
colonica_; he and his buxom wife, had six stalwart sons, and was the
richer man in consequence of having them. No, in my early Florentine
days the _cogito, ergo sum_ could not have been predicated of the
Tuscans.
But the condition of things in the other states of the peninsula, in
Venice and Lombardy under the Austrians, in Naples under the Bourbon
kings, in Romagna under the Pope, and very specially in Modena under
its dukes of the House of Este, was much otherwise.
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