The Manchester Examiner. — 1848-05-09 (Manchester, Greater Manchester, England)

THE TUSCANS AND CULTIVATION IN TUSCANY.—The Contadini of Tuscany are altogether a superior race. Frugal and intelligent, simple and yet highly civilised, their manners mingle self-possession and independence with a natural politeness. The women in particular are remarkable for their graceful deportment; and, as the young Contadina passes us by, with her broad Tuscan bonnet shading her pale forehead and dark languishing eye s, her well-proportioned neck, bound with strings of pearl, and a wrought fazzoletta heightening while attempting to conceal the beauty of her form, we find it hard to believe that so graceful a creature is not some noble damsel, who has assumed to take part in a pastoral, the costume of a shepherdess. Nothing in Florence and Tuscany is more striking than the prevailing comfort, nay, opulence, which on all sides salutes the traveller. If Italy be the garden of Europe, Tuscany is certainly the garden of Italy; but it is a garden which owes its beauty and luxuriance to patient cultivation. A great portion of its surface is occupied by mountains and marshes; the former offering but small and poor tracts of land capable of being cultivated; and the latter, though during winter they support herds of cattle and sheep, yet during summer they are unhealthy, and obliged to be abandoned. The art of good farming is promoted, not alone practically, but theoretically; and every improvement in agriculture is liberally rewarded by the state; and in farming societies and agricultural prizes Florence may nearly vie with either England or Scotland. The lands capable in the smallest degree of cultivation are well cultivated; and it is in this respect that Tuscany may be called the garden of Italy.—Geale's Notes of a Residence in Italy.  A HEARTLESS KlNG.—What gave rise to this conversation was a thing (in the style of many his majesty uttered) which he had said that very day, at his dressing, before, at least, half-a-dozen people, upon Lord Hervey's telling his majesty that be believed he was very glad, after so long a session, to get a little fresh air in the country; to which his majesty very naturally, but very impoliticly, replied, "Yes, my lord, I am very glad to be got away, for I have seen, of late, in London, so many hungry faces every day, that I was afraid they would have eat me at last." The number of things of this kind he used to be perpetually saying would fill volumes, if I were to recount them all; for between those he affected to advance, by way of showing his military bravery, and those which flowed naturally, from his way of thinking and absolute incapacity of feeling, nobody could be with him an hour without hearing something of this kind, that would give them, an ill opinion of him for their lives. I once heard him say, be would much sooner forgive anybody that had murdered a man, than anybody that cut down one of his oaks; because an oak was so much longer in growing to a useful size than a man, and, consequently, one loss would be sooner supplied than the other; and one evening, after a horse had run away, and killed himself against an iron spike, poor Lady Suffolk, saying it was very lucky the man who was upon him had received no hurt, his majesty cut her very short, and said, "Yes, I am very lucky, truly; pray where is the luck? I have lost a good horse, and I have got a booby of a groom still to keep." But I must now tire myself with writing, and others with reading, more samples of his majesty's tenderness to human kind in general, and to those who serve him in particular.—Hervey's Aremotrs of George the Second. - I