A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent CharactersMoore, John
History
A View of Society and Manners in Italy, Volume 2 (of 2): With Anecdotes Relating to some Eminent Characters
Moore, John
Italy -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Italy -- Social life and customs -- Early works to 1800
You know, I suppose, that the Count Albany is the unfortunate Charles
Stuart, who left Rome some time since on the death of his father, because
the Pope did not think proper to acknowledge him by the title which he
claimed on that event. He now lives at Florence, on a small revenue
allowed him by his brother. The Countess is a beautiful woman, much
beloved by those who know her, who universally describe her as lively,
intelligent, and agreeable. Educated as I was in Revolution principles,
and in a part of Scotland where the religion of the Stuart family, and
the maxims by which they governed, are more reprobated than perhaps in
any part of Great Britain, I could not behold this unfortunate person
without the warmest emotion and sympathy. What must a man’s feelings be,
who finds himself excluded from the most brilliant situation, and noblest
inheritance that this world affords, and reduced to an humiliating
dependance on those, who, in the natural course of events, should have
looked up to him for protection and support? What must his feelings be,
when on a retrospective view he beholds a series of calamities attending
his family, that is without example in the annals of the unfortunate;
calamities, of which those they experienced after their accession to the
throne of England, were only a continuation? Their misfortunes began with
their royalty, adhered to them through ages, increased with the increase
of their dominions, did not forsake them when dominion was no more;
and, as he has reason to dread, from his own experience, are not yet
terminated. It will afford no alleviation or comfort, to recollect that
part of this black list of calamities arose from the imprudence of his
ancestors; and that many gallant men, in England, Scotland, and Ireland,
have at different periods been involved in their ruin.
Our sympathy for this unfortunate person is not checked by any blame
which can be thrown on himself. He surely had no share in the errors of
the first Charles, the profligacy of the second, or the impolitic and
bigotted attempts of James against the laws and established religion
of Great Britain and Ireland; therefore, whilst I contemplate with
approbation and gratitude the conduct of those patriots who resisted and
expelled that infatuated monarch, ascertained the rights of the subject,
and settled the constitution of Great Britain on the firm basis of
freedom on which it has stood ever since the Revolution, and on which I
hope it will ever stand, yet I freely acknowledge, that I never could see
the unfortunate Count Albany without sentiments of compassion, and the
most lively sympathy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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