the galleys (but I believe he was eventually pardoned), and scolding the lady with the utmost severity, with a bearing more princely than marital, he forbad her ever again to indulge in such conduct. The princess resented being thus taken to task in the presence of the musicians, perchance with less consideration than she thought due to her high rank, and was exceedingly angry. After passing the whole night in fury and in tears she determined to return to France, and sent one of her gentlemen to the Grand Duke to inform him of her resolution. He, who desired nothing better, as he feared his family might multiply like that of Priam, coldly replied that the Grand Duchess had better reflect on the consequences of such a step, which he would in no way oppose.” It ended by the Grand Duchess returning to France, leaving two sons and a daughter, who were the last of the great house of Medici. After the death of Giovan Gastone in 1738, last surviving son of Cosimo III., Tuscany was given by the treaty of Vienna to Francesco, Duke of Lorraine, husband of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, in exchange for his hereditary estates which were ceded to France. Tuscany was then governed by regents, and of one of these, Marshal Botta, Sir Horace Mann writes to his friend Walpole: “He has made sad work in the Palazzo, and in the garden. His arrangement of the pictures is to make it depend, first upon the freshness of the gilding upon the frames, and then upon the position of the figures in each picture, which figures must not turn their back to the throne. Luther and Calvin, by Giordano, were turned out with a most pious contempt, as not worthy to stand in the presence of so orthodox a prince as is coming here. His mother (Maria Theresa) will not permit any picture to hang in her apartment that shows either a naked leg or arm. This ill agrees with the Medici taste, or the collection they have left. Imagine that grave matron (Maria Theresa) running the gauntlet through the gallery. Ah! quelle horreur!... A famous picture, by Titian, was turned out of the room where the canopy is, because the figure almost turned its back to it, and none are to be admitted there but such as respectfully present their faces to it. The picture of Luther and Calvin was dismissed with a Catholick fury, and, I fear, will find no better place than in that horrid ill-painted room of Hell, at the end of the apartment, that the young prince may see how the enemies of the Church ought to be treated. You will think I exaggerate, but what I have said is literally and ludicrously true. Botta tells the Florentines who criticise his operations, that he knows more of architecture and painting than Andrea del Sarto, or their ancestors who invented their Tuscan Order. Such are his occupations, for as to government, _célà va son train_. Nobody interferes, and nothing can be taxed higher than it is.... The farmers of the revenue, though Tuscans, are more rigorous than the receivers