House and Garden 
THE RTVER GOD BY TRIBOLO 
THE MAIN AVENUE OF THE WOOD 
favor shown him by the court ot Tuscany, 
his life was one of disappointment. The 
title of Duke of Northumberland, granted 
him in 1620 by the Emperor Ferdinand II., 
can scarcely have compensated him for the 
slur cast upon him by an English court. 
H is domestic troubles, too, were heavy, 
although his marriage with Elizabeth South- 
well seems to have been a happy one. In 
1638 he lost his eldest son, of whom he speaks 
with great affection, contrasting him with his 
second son, Don Carlo, who gave him nothing 
hut trouble. The climax was reached when 
the latter broke into the villa and stole three 
hundred ducats’ worth of silver plate. 
One ot Dudley’s letters, preserved in the 
Medicean archives, thus describes the theft: 
“ I have received your excellency’s letter 
in answer to mine concerning Don Carlo. 
Not having heard anything of him for some 
time, many hoped he was doing better, but 
this very silence made me fear the worst, and 
when I went to mass last Sunday, having at 
that time but one servant in the house to go 
with me, I left express orders with the old 
woman who remained behind to lock all the 
doors, so that he could not have got in with¬ 
out employing a petard. But now 1 find 
this woman left all open on purpose that 
he might come in ; and he was hidden in 
a ditch close by and was told as soon as 
I had started for Boldrone to hear mass, it 
being Sunday. I consider the worst part of 
his offence is that he should have committed 
this robbery in a palace of his highness.” 
Other letters follow and through them we 
can trace Don Carlo’s stormy career. In a 
letter of the latter to his brother Ambrogio, he 
says, “Tell him (their father) that to treat his 
sons in Italy as the English treat theirs is to ruin 
them.” He signs himself Don Carlo, Conte di 
Varuiche, in which title it is difficult to recog¬ 
nize that of Earl of Warwick, but so it was. 
In 1649 Robert Dudley, Duke of North¬ 
umberland died and the villa returned to the 
possession of the Medici, who sold it the 
year after. We know that forty-eight years 
later the Corsini bought it. 
Pages might be filled with the long line of 
their illustrious names. As one of the great 
Florentine families, who in olden time were 
among the chief upholders of the Republic, 
in modern times the staunchest supporters of 
the Royal House of Savoy, their history be¬ 
longs to that of Italy and can be read in 
many of its most interesting pages. 
