the professor of natural history here, who had spent some time in
London; he observed, that no native of our island could sit three hours,
and not speak of Shakespear: he added many kind expressions of partial
liking to our nation, and our poets: and l'Abate Cesarotti
good-humouredly confessed his little skill in the English language when
he translated their so much-admired Ossian; but he had studied it pretty
hard since, he said, and his version of Gray's Elegy is charming.

Gray and Young are the favourite writers among us, as far as I have yet
heard them talked over upon the continent; the first has secured them by
his residence at Florence, and his Latin verses I believe; the second,
by his piety and brilliant thoughts. Even Romanists are disposed to
think dear Dr. Young very _near_ to Christianity--an idea which must
either make one laugh or cry, while

    Sweet peace, and heavenly hope, and humble joy,
    Divinely beam on _his_ exalted soul.

But I must tell what I have been seeing at the theatre, and should tell
it much better had not the charms of Countess Ferris's conversation
engaged my mind, which would otherwise perhaps have been more seized on
than it _was_, by the sight of an old pantomime, or wretched farce (for
there was speaking in it, I remember), exploded long since from our very
lowest places of diversion, and now exhibited here at Padua before a
very polite and a very literary audience; and in a better theatre by far
than our newly-adorned opera-house in the Hay-market. Its subject was no
other than the birth of Harlequin; but the place and circumstances
combined to make me look on it in a light which shewed it to uncommon
advantage. The storm, for example, the thunder, darkness, &c. which is
so solemnly made to precede an incantation, apparently not meant to be
ridiculous, after which, a huge egg is somehow miraculously produced
upon the stage, put me in mind of the very old mythologists, who thus
desired to represent the chaotic state of things, when Night, Ocean, and
Tartarus disputed in perpetual confusion; till _Love_ and _Music_
separated the elements, and as Dryden says,

    Then hot and cold, and moist and dry,
    In order to their stations leap,
      And music's power obey.

For _Cupid_, advancing to a slow tune, steadies with his wand the
rolling mass upon the stage, that then begins to teem with its _motley
inhabitant_, and just representative of the _created world_, active,
wicked, gay, amusing, which gains your heart, but never your esteem:
tricking, shifting, and worthless as it is--but after all its _frisks_,
all its _escapes_, is condemned at last to burn in _fire, and pass
entirely away_. Such was, I trust, the idea of the person, whoever he
was, that had the honour first to compose this curious exhibition, and
model this mythological device into a pantomime! for the _mundane_, or
as Proclus calls it, the _orphick_ egg, is possibly the earliest of all
methods taken to explain the rise, progress, and final conclusion of our
earth and atmosphere; and was the original _theory_ brought from Egypt
into Greece by Orpheus. Nor has that prodigious genius, Dr. Thomas
Burnet, scorned to adopt it seriously in his _Telluris Theoria sacra_,
written less than a century ago, adapting it with wonderful ingenuity
to the Christian system and Mosaical account of things; to which it
certainly does accommodate itself the better, as the form of an egg well
resembles that of our habitable globe; and the internal divisions, our
four elements, leaving the central fire for the yolk. I therefore
regarded our pantomime here at Padua with a degree of reverence I should
have found difficult to excite in myself at Sadler's Wells; where ideas
of antiquity would have been little likely to cross my fancy. Sure I am,
however, that the original inventor of this old pantomime had his head
very full at the time of some very ancient learning.

Now then I must leave this lovely state of Venice, where if the paupers
in every town of it did not crowd about one, tormenting passengers with
unextinguishable clamour, and surrounding them with sights of horror
unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should
alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable
distresses--one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of
quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that
less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such
wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and
pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me
that some steps should be taken at Venice at least, to remove a nuisance
so disgraceful; and said, that when I came again, I should walk about
the town in white sattin slippers, and never see a beggar from one end
of it to the other.

On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to
Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan
friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want
it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this
night under the pope's protection:--may God but grant us his!

FERRERA.

We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent,
considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely
any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting
in one's mind.

I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Sussex, who, at
twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea;
nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:--And well, child!
said I, are not you much surprised?--"It is a fine sight, to be sure,"
replied she coldly, "but,"--but what? you are not disappointed are
you?--"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I
saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what
did you expect to see? "_Why I expected_," with a hesitating accent, "_I
expected to see a great deal of water_." This answer set me _then_ into
a fit of laughter, but I have _now_ found out that I am not a whit
wiser than Peggy: for what did I figure to myself that I should find the
Po? only a great deal of water to be sure; and a very great deal of
water it certainly is, and much more, God knows, than I ever saw before,
except between the shores of Calais and Dover; yet I did feel something
like disappointment too; when my imagination wandering over all that the
poets had said about it, and finding earth too little to contain their
fables, recollected that they had thought Eridanus worthy of a place
among the constellations, I wished to see such a river as was worthy all
these praises, and even then, says I,

    O'er golden sands let rich Pactolus flow.
    And trees weep amber on the banks of Po.

But are we sure after all it was upon the _banks_ these trees, not now
existing, were ever to be found? they grew in the Electrides if I
remember right, and even there Lucian laughingly said, that he spread
his garments in vain to catch the valuable distillation which poetry had
taught him to expect; and Strabo (worse news still!) said that there
were no Electrides neither; so as we knew before--fiction is false: and
had I not discovered it by any other means, I might have recollected a
comical contest enough between a literary lady once, and Doctor Johnson,
to which I was myself a witness;--when she, maintaining the happiness
and purity of a country life and rural manners, with her best eloquence,
and she had a great deal; added as corroborative and almost
incontestable authority, that the _Poets_ said so: "and didst thou not
know then," replied he, my darling dear, that the _Poets lye_?

When they tell us, however, that great rivers have horns, which twisted
off become cornua copiæ, dispensing pleasure and plenty, they entertain
us it must be confessed; and never was allegory more nearly allied with
truth, than in the lines of Virgil;

    Gemina auratus taurino cornua vultu,
    Eridanus, quo non alius per pinguia culta,
    In mare purpureuin violentior influit amnis[U];

[Footnote U:
    Whence bull-fac'd, so adorn'd with gilded horns,
    Than whom no river through such level meads,
    Down to the sea in swifter torrents speeds.
]

so accurately translated by Doctor Warton, who would not reject the
epithet _bull-faced_, because he knew it was given in imitation of the
Thessalian river Achelous, that fought for Dejanira; and Servius, who
makes him father to the Syrens, says that many streams, in compliment to
this original one, were represented with horns, because of their winding
course. Whether Monsieur Varillas, or our immortal Addison, mention
their being so perpetuated on medals now existing, I know not; but in
this land of rarities we shall soon hear or see.

Mean time let us leave looking for these weeping Heliades, and enquire
what became of the Swan, that poor Phaeton's friend and cousin turned
into, for very grief and fear at seeing him tumble in the water. For my
part I believe that not only now he

    Eligit contraria flumina flammis,

but that the whole country is grown disagreeably hot to him, and the
sight of the sun's chariot so near frightens him still; for he certainly
lives more to his taste, and sings sweeter I believe on the banks of the
Thames, than in Italy, where we have never yet seen but _one_; and that
was kept in a small marble bason of water at the Durazzo palace at
Genoa, and seemed miserably out of condition. I enquired why they gave
him no companion? and received for answer, "That it would be wholly
useless, as they were creatures who never bred _out if their own
country_." But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little
disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much
ratiocination, is apt to cry out, "_Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci farà
andare tutti matti_[V]." They have indeed so many external amusements in
the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon
_them_, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy climates,
should they suffer _their_ intellectual powers to pine for want of
exercise, not food: for here is enough to think upon, God knows, were
they disposed so to employ their time; where one may justly affirm that,

[Footnote V: What signifies all this minuteness of inquiry?--it will
drive us mad.]

    On every thorn delightful wisdom grows,
    And in each rill, some sweet instruction flows;
    But some untaught o'erhear the murmuring rill,
    In spite of sacred leisure--blockheads still.

The road from Padua hither is not a good one; but so adorned, one cares
not much whether it is good or no: so sweetly are the mulberry-trees
planted on each side, with vines richly festooning up and down them, as
if for the decoration of a dance at the opera. One really expects the
flower-girls with baskets, or garlands, and scarcely can persuade one's
self that all is real.

Never sure was any thing more rejoicing to the heart, than this lovely
season in this lovely country. The city of Ferrara too is a fine one;
Ferrara _la civile_, the Italians call it, but it seems rather to merit
the epithet _solenne_; so stately are its buildings, so wide and uniform
its streets. My pen was just upon the point of praising its cleanliness
too, till I reflected there was nobody to dirty it. I looked half an
hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but
it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had
laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the
foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Talassi, who was in
England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired
talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to
Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that
time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated
characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly
overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by
illness. In all this, however, there was nothing ridiculous; but we
fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that
he called it _Luogo assai popolato ed ameno_[Footnote: A populous and
delightful place.], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to
the subject: but the jest disappeared when I got into _his_ town; a
place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but
that of being _popolato ed ameno_; and I sincerely believe that no
Ferrara-man could have missed making the same or a like observation; as
in this finely-constructed city, the grass literally grows in the
street; nor do I hear that the state of the air and water is such as is
likely to tempt new inhabitants. How much then, and how reasonably must
he have wondered, and how easily must he have been led to express his
wonder, at seeing a village no bigger than that of Streatham, contain a
number of people equal, as I doubt not but it does, to all the dwellers
in Ferrara!

Mr. Talassi is reckoned in his own country a man of great genius; in
ours he was, as I recollect, received with much attention, as a person
able and willing to give us demonstration that improviso verses might be
made, and sung extemporaneously to some well-known tune, generally one
which admits of and requires very long lines; that so alternate rhymes
may not be improper, as they give more time to think forward, and gain a
moment for composition. Of this power, many, till they saw it done, did
not believe the existence; and many, after they had seen it done,
persisted in _saying_, perhaps in _thinking_, that it could be done only
in Italian. I cannot however believe that they possess any exclusive
privileges or supernatural gifts; though it will be hard to find one who
thinks better of them than I do: but Spaniards can sing sequedillas
under their mistresses window well enough; and our Welch people can
make the harper sit down in the church-yard after service is over, and
placing themselves round him, command the instrument to go over some old
song-tune: when having listened a while, one of the company forms a
stanza of verses, which run to it in well-adapted measure; and as he
ends, another begins: continuing the tale, or retorting the satire,
according to the style in which the first began it. All this too in a
language less perhaps than any other melodious to the ear, though Howell
found out a resemblance between their prosody and that of the Italian
writer in early days, when they held agnominations, or the inforcement
of consonant words and syllables one upon the other, to be elegant in a
more eminent degree than they do now. For example, in Welch, _Tewgris,
todykris, ty'r derrin, gwillt_, &c. in Italian, _Donne, O danno che selo
affronto affronta: in selva salvo a me_, with a thousand more. The whole
secret of improvisation, however, seems to consist in this; that
extempore verses are never written down, and one may easily conceive
that much may go off well with a good voice in singing, which no one
would read if they were once registered by the pen.

I have already asserted that the Italians are not a laughing nation:
were ridicule to step in among them, many innocent pleasures would soon
be lost; and this among the first. For who would risque the making
impromptu poems at Paris? _pour s'attirer persiflage_ in every _Coterie
comme il faut_[Footnote: To draw upon one's self the ridicule of every
polite assembly.]? Or in London, at the hazard of being _taken off, and
held up for a laughing-stock at every print-seller's window_? A man must
have good courage in England, before he ventures at diverting a little
company by such devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a
third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the
stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be
called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in
such-a-one's head, about his _Daphne_! In good time! Why I have been
tired of _Daphne_ since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of
all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example,
set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares
concerning his sweetheart's _cruelty_; when he would be in more danger
from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not
throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves,
and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not _statutably mad_,
commit him for a vagrant.

Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different
countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to
refine their _pleasures_ without so refining their _ideas_ as to be able
no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power
of ridiculing it.

This city of Ferrara has produced some curious and opposite characters
in times past, however empty it may now be thought: one painter too, and
one singer, both super-eminent in their professions, have dropped their
own names, and are best known to fame by that of _Il_ and _La
Ferrarese_. Nor can I leave it without some reflections on the
extraordinary life of Renée de France, daughter of Louis XII surnamed
the Just, and Anne de Bretagne, his first wife. This lady having married
the famous Hercules D'Este, one of the handsomest men in Europe, lived
with him here in much apparent felicity as Duchess of Ferrara; but took
such an aversion to the church and court of Rome, from the superstitions
she saw practised in Italy, that though she resolved to dissemble her
opinions during the life of her husband, whom she wished not to disgust,
at the instant of his death she quitted all her dignities; and retiring
to France, was protected by her father in the open profession of
Calvinism, living a life of privacy and purity among the Huguenots in
the southern provinces. This _Louis le Juste_ was he who gave the French
what little pretensions they have ever obtained on which to fix the
foundations of future liberty: he first established a parliament at
Rouen, another at Aix; but while thus gentle to his subjects, he was a
scourge to Italy, made his public entry into Genoa as Sovereign, and
tore the Milanese from the Sforza family, somewhat before the year 1550.

The well-known Franciscus Ferrariensis, whose name was Silvester, is a
character very opposite to that of fair Renée: he wrote the best apology
for the Romanists against Luther, and gained applause from both sides
for his controversial powers; while the strictness of his life gave
weight to his doctrine, and ornamented the sect which he delighted to
defend.

By a native of Ferrara too were first collected the books that were
earliest placed in the Ambrosian library at Milan, Barnardine Ferrarius,
whose deep erudition and simple manners gained him the favour of
Frederick Borromeo, who sent him to Spain to pick up literary rarities,
which he bestowed with pleasure on the place where he had received his
education. His treatise on the rites of sepulture used by the ancients
is in good estimation; and Sir Thomas Brown, in his _Urn Burial_, owes
him much obligation.

The custom of wearing swords here seems to proceed from some connection
they have had with the Spaniards; and Dr. Moore has given us an
admirable account of why the Highland broad-sword is still called an
_Andrew Ferrara_.

The Venetians, not often or easily intimidated by Papal power, having
taken this city in the year 1303, were obliged to restore it, for fear
of the consequences of Pope Boniface the Eighth's excommunications; his
displeasure having before then produced dreadful effects in the
conspiracy of Bajamonti Tiepulo; which was suppressed, and he killed, by
a woman, out of a flaming zeal for the honour and tranquillity of her
country: and so disinterested too was her spirit of patriotism, that the
only reward she required for a service so essential, was that a constant
memorial of it might be preserved in the dress of the Doge; who from
that moment obliged himself to wear a woman's cap under the state
diadem, and so his successors still continue to do.

But Ferrara has other distinctions.--Bonarelli here, at the academy of
gl'Intrepidi, read his able defence of that pastoral comedy so much
applauded and censured, called _Filli di Sciro_; and here the great
Ariosto lived and died.

Nothing leads however to a less gloomy train of thought, than the tomb
of a celebrated man; where virtue, wit, or valour triumph over death,
and wait the consummation of all sublunary things, before the
remembrance of such superiority shall be lost. Italy must be shaken from
her deepest foundation, and England made a scene of general ruin, when
Shakespear and Ariosto shall be forgotten, and their names confounded
among deedless nobility, and worthless wasters of treasure, long ago
passed from hand to hand, perhaps from the dwellers in one continent to
the inhabitants of another. It has been equally the fate of these two
heroes of modern literature, that they have pleased their countrymen
more than foreigners; but is that any diminution of their merit? or
should it serve as a reason for making disgraceful comparisons between
Ariosto and Virgil, whom he scorned to imitate? A dead language is like
common ground;--all have a right to pasture, and all a claim to give or
to withhold admiration. Virgil is the old original trough at the corner
of the road, where every passer-by pays, drinks, and goes on his journey
well refreshed. But the clear spring in the meadow sure, though private
property, and lately dug, deserves attention: and confers delight not
only on the actual master of the ground, but on all his visitants who
can climb the style, and lift the silver cup to their lips which hangs
by the fountain-side.

I am glad, however, to be gone from a place where they are thinking less
of all these worthies just at present, than of a circumstance which
cannot redound to their honour, as it might have happened to any other
town, and could do great good to none: no less than the happy arrival of
Joseph, and Leopold, and Maximilian of Austria, on the thirtieth of May
1775; and this wonderful event have they recorded in a pompous
inscription upon a stone set at the inn door. But princes can make
poets, and scatter felicity with little exertion on their own parts.

At Tuillemont, an English gentleman once told me he had the misfortune
to sleep one night where all the people's heads were full of the
Emperor, who had dined there the day before; and some _wise_ fellow of
the place wrote these lines under his picture:

    Ingreditur magnus magno de Cæsare Cæsar,
    Thenas, sub signo Cervi, sua prandia sumit.

He immediately set down this distich under them:

    Our poor little town has no little to brag,
    The Emperor was here, and he dined at the Stag.

The people of the inn concluding that this must be a high-strained
compliment, it produced him many thanks from all, and a better breakfast
than he would otherwise have obtained at Tuillemont.

To-morrow we go forward to Bologna.

BOLOGNA

SEEMS at first sight a very sorrowful town, and has a general air of
melancholy that surprises one, as it is very handsomely and regularly
built; and set in a country so particularly beautiful, that it is not
easy to express the nature of its beauty, and to express it so that
those who inhabit other countries can understand me.

The territory belonging to Bologna la Grassa concenters all its charms
in a happy _embonpoint_, which leaves no wrinkle unfilled up, no bone to
be discerned; like the fat figure of Gunhilda at Fonthill, painted by
Chevalier Cafali, with a face full of woe, but with a sleekness of skin
that denotes nothing less than affliction. From the top of the only
eminence, one looks down here upon a country which to me has a new and
singular appearance; the whole horizon appearing one thick carpet of the
softest and most vivid green, from the vicinity of the broad-leaved
mulberry trees, I trust, drawn still closer and closer together by
their amicable and pacific companions the vines, which keep cluttering
round, and connect them so intimately that no object can be separately
or distinctly viewed, any more than the habitations formed by animals
who live in moss, when a large portion of it is presented to the
philosopher for speculation. One would not therefore, on a flight and
cursory inspection, suspect this of being a painter's country, where no
prominence of features arrests the sight, no expression of latent
meaning employs the mind, and no abruptness of transition tempts fancy
to follow, or imagination to supply, the sudden loss of what it
contemplated before.

Here however the great Caraccis kept their school; here then was every
idea of dignity and majestic beauty to be met with; and if _I_ meet with
nothing in nature near this place to excite such ideas, it is _my_
fault, not Bologna's.

    If vain the toil,
    We ought to blame the culture,--not the soil.

Wonderful indeed! yet not at all distracting is the variety of
excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars!
The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I would compare to Waller among
our English poets; Domenichino to Otway, and Guido Rheni to Rowe; if
such liberties might be permitted on the old notion of _ut pictura
poesis_. But there is an idea about the world, that one ought in
delicacy to declare one's utter incapacity of understanding pictures,
unless immediately of the profession.--And why so? No man protests, that
he cannot read poetry, he can make no pleasure out of Milton or
Shakespear, or shudder at the ingratitude of Lear's daughters on the
stage. Why then should people pretend insensibility, when divine
Guercino exerts his unrivalled powers of the pathetic in the fine
picture at Zampieri palace, of Hagar's dismission into the desert with
her son? While none else could have touched with such truth of
expression the countenances of each; leaving him most to be pitied,
perhaps, who issues the command against his will; accompanying it
however with innumerable benedictions, and alleviating its severity with
the softest tenderness.

He only among our poets could have planned such a picture, who penned
the Eloisa, and knew the agonies of a soul struggling against
unpermitted passions, and conquering from the noblest motives of faith
and of obedience.

Glorious exertion of excellence! This is the first time my heart has
been made really alive to the powers of this magical art. Candid
Italians! let me again exclaim; they shewed us a Vandyke in the same
palace, surrounded by the works of their own incomparable countrymen;
and _there_ say they, "_Quasi quasi si può circondarla_[Footnote: You
may almost run round her.]." You may almost run round it, was the
expression. The picture was a very fine one; a single figure of the
Madona, highly painted, and happily placed among those who knew, because
they possessed his perfections who drew it. Were Homer alive, and
acquainted with our language, he would admire that Shakespear whom
Voltaire condemns. Twice in this town has Guido shewed those powers
which critics have denied him: the power of grouping his figures with
propriety, and distributing his light and shadow to advantage: as he
has shewn it _but twice_, however, it is certain the connoisseurs are
not very wrong, and even in those very performances one may read their
justification: for Job, though surrounded by a crowd of people, has a
strangely insulated look, and the sweet sufferer on the fore-ground of
his Herodian cruelty seems wholly uninterested in the general distress,
and occupies herself and every spectator completely and solely with her
own particular grief.

The boasted Raphael here does not in my eyes triumph over the wonders of
this Caracci school. At Rome, I am told, his superiority is more
visible. _Nous verrons_[Footnote: We shall see.].

The reserved picture of St. Peter and St. Paul, kept in the last chamber
of the Zampieri palace, and covered with a silk curtain, is valued
beyond any specimen of the painting art which can be moved from Italy to
England. We are taught to hope it will soon come among us; and many say
the sale cannot be now long delayed. Why Guido should never draw another
picture like that, or at all in the same style, who can tell? it
certainly does unite every perfection, and every possible excellence,
except choice of subject, which cannot be happy I think, when the
subject itself is left disputable.

I will mention only one other picture: it is in an obscure church, not
an unfrequented one by these pious Bolognese, who are the most devout
people I ever lived amongst, but I think not much visited by travellers.
It is painted by Albano, and represents the Redeemer of mankind as a boy
scarce thirteen years old: ingenuous modesty, and meek resignation,
beaming from each intelligent feature of a face divinely beautiful, and
throwing out luminous rays round his sacred head, while the blessed
Virgin and St. Joseph, placed on each side him, adore his goodness with
transport not unmixed with wonder: the instruments of his future passion
cast at his feet, directing us to consider him as in that awful moment
voluntarily devoting himself for the sins of the whole world.

This picture, from the sublimity of the subject, the lively colouring,
and clear expression, has few equals; the pyramidal group drops in as of
itself, unsought for, from the raised ground on which our Saviour
stands; and among numberless wild conceits and extravagant fancies of
painters, not only permitted but encouraged in this country, to deviate
into what _we_ justly think profane representations of the deity:--this
is the most pleasing and inoffensive device I have seen.

The august Creator too is likewise more wisely concealed by Albano than
by other artists, who daringly presume to exhibit that of which no
mortal man can give or receive a just idea. But we will have done for a
while with connoisseurship.

This fat Bologna has a tristful look, from the numberless priests,
friars, and women all dressed in black, who fill the streets, and stop
on a sudden to pray, when I see nothing done to call forth immediate
addresses to Heaven. Extremes do certainly meet however, and my Lord
Peter in this place is so like his fanatical brother Jack, that I know
not what is come to him. To-morrow is the day of _corpus domini_; why it
should be preceded by such dismal ceremonies I know not; there is
nothing melancholy in the idea, but we shall be sure of a magnificent
procession.

So it was too, and wonderfully well attended: noblemen and ladies, with
tapers in their hands, and their trains borne by well-dressed pages, had
a fine effect. All still in black.

    Black, but such as in esteem
    Prince Memnon's sister might beseem;
    With sable stole of cypress lawn,
    O'er their decent shoulders drawn.

I never saw a spectacle so stately, so solemn a show in my life before,
and was much less tired of the long continued march, than were my Roman
Catholic companions.

Our inn is not a good one; the Pellegrino is engaged for the King of
Naples and his train: the place we are housed in, is full of bugs, and
every odious vermin: no wonder, surely, where such oven-like porticoes
catch and retain the heat as if constructed on set purpose so to do. The
Montagnola at night was something of relief, but contrary to every other
resort of company: the less it is frequented the gayer it appears; for
Nature there has been lavish of her bounties, which seem disregarded by
the Bolognese, who unluckily find out that there is a burying-ground
within view, though at no small distance really; and planting
themselves over against that, they stand or kneel for many minutes
together in whole rows, praying, as I understand, for the souls which
once animated the bodies of the people whom they believe to lie interred
there; all this too even at the hours dedicated to amusement.

Cardinal Buon Compagni, the legate, sent from Rome here, is gone home;
and the vice-legate officiated in his place, much to the consolation of
the inhabitants, who observed with little delight or gratitude his
endeavours to improve their trade, or his care to maintain their
privileges; while his natural disinclination to hypocritical manners, or
what we so emphatically call _cant_, gave them an aversion to his person
and dislike of his government, which he might have prevented by
formality of look, and very trifling compliances. But every thing helps
to prove, that if you would please people, it must be done _their_ way,
not your own.

Here are some charming manufactures in this town, and I fear it requires
much self-denial in an Englishwoman not to long at least for the fine
crapes, tiffanies, &c. which might here be bought I know not how cheap,
and would make one _so_ happy in London or at Bath. But these
Customhouse officers! these _rats de cave_, as the French comically call
them, will not let a ribbon pass. Such is the restless jealousy of
little states, and such their unremitted attention to keep the goods
made in one place out of the gates of another. Few things upon a journey
contribute to torment and disgust one more than the teasing enquiries at
the door of every city, who one is, what one's name is? what one's rank
in life or employment is; that so all may be written down and carried to
the chief magistrate for his information, who immediately dispatches a
proper person to examine whether you gave in a true report; where you
lodge, why you came, how long you mean to stay; with twenty more
inquisitive speeches, which to a subject of more liberal governments
must necessarily appear impertinent as frivolous, and make all my hopes
of bringing home the most trifling presents for a friend abortive. So
there is an end of that felicity, and we must sit like the girl at the
fair, described by Gay,

    Where the coy nymph knives, combs, and scissars spies,
    And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes.

The Specola, so they call their museum here, of natural and artificial
rarities, is very fine indeed; the inscription too denoting its
universality, is sublimely generous: I thought of our Bath hospital in
England; more usefully, if not more magnificently so; but durst not tell
the professor, who shewed the place. At our going in he was apparently
much out of humour, and unwilling to talk, but grew gradually kinder,
and more communicative; and I had at last a thousand thanks to pay for
an attention that rendered the sight of all more valuable. Nothing can
surpass the neatness and precision with which this elegant repository is
kept, and the curiosities contained in it have specimens very uncommon.
The native gold shewed here is supposed to be the largest and most
perfect lump in Europe; wonderfully beautiful it certainly is, and the
coral here is such as can be seen nowhere else; they shewed me some
which looked like an actual tree.

It might reasonably lower the spirits of philosophy, and tend to
restraining the genius of remote enquiry, did we reflect that the very
first substance given into our hand as an amusement, or subject of
speculation, as soon as we arrive in this great world of wonders, never
gets fully understood by those who study hardest, or live longest in it.

Coral is a substance, concerning which the natural historians have had
many disputes, and settled nothing yet; knowing, as it should seem, but
little more of its original, than they did when they sucked it first. Of
gold we have found perhaps but too many uses; but when the professor
told us here at Bologna, that silver in the mine was commonly found
mixed with _arsenick_, a corroding poison, or _lead_, a narcotic one;
who could help being led forward to a train of thought on the nature and
use and abuse of money and minerals in general. _Suivez_ (as Rousseau
says), _la chaine de tout cela_[Footnote: Follow this clue, and see
where it will lead you to.].

The astronomical apparatus at this place is a splendid one; but the
models of architecture, fortifications, &c. are only more numerous; not
so exact or elegant I think as those the King of England has for his own
private use at the Queen's house in St. James's Park. The specimens of
a human figure in wax are the work of a woman, whose picture is
accordingly set up in the school: they are reckoned incomparable of
their kind, and bring to one's fancy Milton's fine description of our
first parents:

    Two of far nobler kind--erect and tall.

This University has been particularly civil to women; many very learned
ladies of France and Germany have been and are still members of it;--and
la Dottoressa Laura Bassi gave lectures not many years ago in this very
spot, upon the mathematics and natural philosophy, till she grew very
old and infirm; but her pupils always handed her very respectfully to
and from the Doctor's chair, _Che brava donnetta ch'era!_[Footnote: Ah,
what a fine woman was that!] says the gentleman who shewed me the
academy, as we came out at the door; over which a marble tablet, with an
inscription more pious than pompous, is placed to her memory; but
turning away his eyes--while they filled with tears--_tutli
muosono_[Footnote: All must die.], added he, and I followed; as nothing
either of energy or pathos could be added to a reflection so just, so
tender, and so true: we parted sadly therefore with our agreeable
companion and instructor just where her cenotaph (for the body lies
buried in a neighbouring church) was erected; and shall probably meet no
more; for as he said and sighed--_tutti muosono_[Footnote: All must
die.].

The great Cassini too, who though of an Italian family, was born at Nice
I think, and died at Paris, drew his meridian line through the church of
St. Petronius in this city, across the pavement, where it still remains
a monument to his memory, who discovered the third and fifth satellites
of Jupiter. Such was in his time the reputation of a mineral spring near
Bologna, that Pope Alexander the Seventh set him to analyse the waters
of it; and so satisfactory were his proofs of its very slight importance
to health, that the same pope called him to Rome to examine the waters
round that capital; but dying soon after his arrival, he had no time to
recompence Cassini's labours, though a very elegantly-minded man, and a
great encourager of learning in all its branches. The successor to this
sovereign, Rospigliosi, had different employment found for _him_, in
helping the Venetians to regain Candia from the Turks, his
disappointment in not being able to accomplish which design broke his
heart; and Cassini, returning to Bologna, found it less pleasing than it
was before he left it, so went to Paris, and died there at ninety or
ninety-one years old, as I remember, early in this present century, but
not till after he had enjoyed the pleasure of hearing that Count
Marsigli had founded an academy at the place where he had studied whilst
his faculties were strong.

Another church, situated on the only hill one can observe for miles, is
dedicated to the Madonna St. Luc, as it is called; and a very beautiful
and curiously covered way is made to it up the hill, for three miles in
length, and at a prodigious expence, to guard the figure from the rain
as it is carried in procession. The ascent is so gentle that one hardly
feels it. Pillars support the roof, which defends you from a sun-stroke,
while the air and prospect are let in between them on the right hand as
you go. The left side is closed up by a wall, adorned from time to time
with fresco paintings, representing the birth and most distinguished
passages in the life of the blessed Virgin. Round these paintings a
little chapel is railed in, open, airy, and elegantly, not very
pompously, adorned; there are either seven or twelve of them, I forget
which, that serve to rest the procession as it passes, on days
particularly dedicated to her service. When you arrive at the top, a
church of a most beautiful construction recompenses your long but not
tedious walk, and there are some admirable pictures in it, particularly
one of St. William laying down his armour, and taking up the habit of a
Carthusian, very fine--but the figure of the Madonna is the prize they
value, and before this I did see some men kneel with a truly idolatrous
devotion. That it was painted by St. Luke is believed by them all. But
if it _was_ painted by St. Luke, said I, what then? do you think _he_,
or the still more excellent person it was done for, would approve of
your worshipping any thing but God? To this no answer was made; and I
thought one man looked as if he had grace enough to be ashamed of
himself.

The girls, who sit in clusters at the chapel doors as one goes up,
singing hymns in praise of the Virgin Mary, pleased me much, as it was
a mode of veneration inoffensive to religion, and agreeable to the
fancy; but seeing them bow down to that black figure, in open defiance
of the Decalogue, shocked me. Why all the _very very_ early pictures of
the Virgin, and many of our blessed Saviour himself, done in the first
ages of Christianity should be _black_, or at least tawny, is to me
wholly incomprehensible, nor could I ever yet obtain an explanation of
its cause from men of learning or from connoisseurs.

We have in England a black Madonna, very ancient of course, and of
immense value, in the cathedral of Wells in Somersetshire; it is painted
on glass, and stands in the middle pane of the upper window I think, is
a profile face, and eminently handsome. My mind tells me that I have
seen another somewhere in Great Britain, but cannot recollect the spot,
unless it were Arundel Castle in Sussex, but I am not sure: none was
ever painted so since the days of Pietro Perugino I believe, so their
antiquity is unquestionable: he and his few contemporaries drew her
white, as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pompeio Battoni.

Whilst I perambulated the palaces of the Bolognese nobility, gloomy
though spacious, and melancholy though splendid, I could not but admire
at Richardson's judgment when he makes his beautiful Bigot, his
interesting Clementina, an inhabitant of superstitious Bologna. The
unconquerable attachment she shews to original prejudices, and the
horror of what she has been taught to consider as heresy, could scarcely
have been attributed so happily to the dweller in any town but this:
where I hear nothing but the sound of people saying their rosaries, and
see nothing in the street but people telling their beads. The Porretta
palace is hourly presenting itself to my imagination, which delights in
the assurance that genius cannot be confined by place. Dear Richardson
at Salisbury Court Fleet Street, and Parson's Green Fulham, felt all
within him that travelling can tell, or experience confirm: he had seen
little, and Johnson has often told me that he had read little; but what
he did read never forsook a memory that was not contented with
retaining, but fermented all that fell into it, and made a new creation
from the fertility of his own rich mind.--These are the men for whom
monuments need not be erected.

    They in our pleasure and astonishment,
    Do build themselves a live long monument;

as Milton says of a much greater writer still.

But the King of Naples is arrived, and that attention which wits and
scholars can retain for centuries, may not be unjustly paid to princes
while they last.

Our Bolognese have hit upon an odd method of entertaining him however:
no other than making a representation of Mount Vesuvius on the
Montagnuola, or place of evening resort, hoping at least to treat him
with something new I trow. Were the King of England to visit these _cari
Bolognese_, surely they would shew him Westminster Bridge, with a view
of the Archbishop's palace at Lambeth on one side the river, and
Somerset-house on the other.

A pretty throne, or state-box, was soon got in order, _that it was_; and
the motion excited by carrying the fire-works to have them prepared for
the evening's show, gave life to the morning, which hung less heavily
than usual; nor did the people recollect the church-yard at a distance,
while the merry King of Naples was near them. His Majesty appeared
perfectly contented and good-humoured, and happy with whatever was done
for his amusement. I remember his behaviour at Milan though, too well to
be surprised at his pleasantness of disposition, when my maid was
delighted to see him dance among the girls at a Festa di Ballo, from
whence I retired early myself, and sent her back to enjoy it all in my
domino. He played at cards too when at Milan I recollect, in the common
Ridotto Chamber at the Theatre, and played for common sums, so as to
charm every one with his kindness and affability.

I am glad however that we shall now be soon released from this upon the
whole disagreeable town, where there is the best possible food too for
body and mind; but where the inhabitants seem to think only of the next
world, and do little to amuse those who have not yet quite done with
this. If they are sincere mean time, God will bless them with a long
continuance of the appellation they so justly deserve; and those
travellers who pass through will find some amends in the rich cream and
incomparable dinners every day, for the insects that devour them every
night; and will, if they are wise, seek compensation from the company of
the half animated pictures that crowd the palaces and churches, for the
half dead inhabitants who kneel in the streets of Bologna.

FLORENCE.

We slept no-where, except perhaps in the carriage, between our last
residence at Bologna and this delightful city, to which we passed
apparently through a new region of the earth, or even air; clambering up
mountains covered with snow, and viewing with amazement the little
vallies between, where, after quitting the summer season, all glowing
with heat and spread into verdure, we found cherry-trees in blossom,
oaks and walnuts scarcely beginning to bud. These mountains are however
much below those of Savoy for dignity and beauty of appearance, though
high enough to be troublesome, and barren enough to be desolate. These
Appenines have been called by some the Back Bone of Italy, as Varenius
and others style the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, Back Bone of the
World; and these, as they do, run in a long chain down the middle of the
Peninsula they are placed in; but being rounded at top are supposed to
be aquatick, while the Alps, Andes, &c. are of late acknowledged by
philosophers to be volcanic, as the most lofty of _them_ terminate in
points of granite, wholly devoid of horizontal strata, and without
petrifactions contained in them,

    _Here_ the tracts around display
    How impetuous ocean's sway
    Once with wasteful fury spread
    The wild waves o'er each mountain's head.

    PARSONS.

But the offspring of fire somehow _should_ be more striking than that of
water, however violent might have been the concussion that produced
them; and there is no comparison between the sensations felt in passing
the Roche Melon, and these more neatly-moulded Appenines; upon whose
tops I am told too no lakes have been formed, as on Mount Cenis, or
even on Snowdon in North Wales, where a very beautiful lake adorns the
summit of the rock; which affords trout precisely such as you eat before
you go down to Novalesa, but not so large.

Sir William Hamilton, however, is the man to be referred to in all these
matters; no man has examined the peculiar properties and general nature
of mountains, those which vomit fire in particular, with half as much
application, inspired by half as much genius, as he has done.

We arrived late at our inn, an English one they say it is; and many of
the last miles were passed very pleasantly by my maid and myself, in
anticipating the comforts we should receive by finding ourselves among
our own country folks. In good time! and by once more eating, sleeping,
&c. _all in the English way_, as her phrase is. Accordingly, here are
small low beds again, soft and clean, and down pillows; here are currant
tarts, which the Italians scorn to touch, but which we are happy and
delighted to pay not ten but twenty times their value for, because a
currant tart is so much _in the English way_: and here are beans and
bacon in a climate where it is impossible that bacon should be either
wholesome or agreeable; and one eats infinitely worse than one did at
Milan, Venice, or Bologna: and infinitely dearer too; but that makes it
still more completely _in the English way_.

Mean time here we are however in Arno's Vale; the full moon shining over
Fiesole, which I see from my windows. Milton's verses every moment in
one's mouth, and Galileo's house twenty yards from one's door,

    Whence her bright orb the Tuscan artist view'd,
    At evening from the top of Fesole;
    Or in Val d'Arno to descry new lands,
    Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe.

Our apartments here are better than we hoped for, situated most sweetly
on the banks of this classical stream; a noble terrace underneath our
window, broad as the south parade at Bath I think, and the fine Ponte
della Santa Trinità within sight. Many people have asserted that this is
the first among all bridges in the world; but architecture triumphs in
the art of building bridges, and, though this is a most exquisitely
beautiful fabric, I can scarcely venture to call it an unrivalled one:
it shall, if the fine statues at the corners can assist its power over
the fancy, and if cleanliness can compensate for stately magnificence,
or for the fire of original and unassisted genius, it shall obliterate
from my mind the Rialto at Venice, and the fine arch thrown over the
Conway at Llanwrst in our North Wales.

I wrote to a lady at Venice this morning though, to say, however I might
be charmed by the sweets of Arno's side, I could not forbear regretting
the Grand Canal.

Count Manucci, a nobleman of this city, formerly intimate with Mr.
Thrale in London and Mr. Piozzi at Paris, came early to our apartments,
and politely introduced us to the desirable society of his sisters and
his friends. We have in his company and that of Cavalier d'Elci, a
learned and accomplished man, of high birth, deep erudition, and
polished manners, seen much, and with every possible advantage.

This morning they shewed us La Capella St. Lorenzo, where I could but
think how surprisingly Mr. Addison's prediction was verified, that these
slow Florentines would not perhaps be able to finish the burial-place
of their favourite family, before the family itself should be extinct.
This reflection felt like one naturally suggested to me by the place;
Doctor Moore however has the original merit of it, as I afterwards found
it in his book: but it is the peculiar property of natural thoughts well
expressed, to sink into one's mind and incorporate themselves with it,
so as to make one forget they were not all one's own.

_Poets, as well as jesters, do oft prove prophets:_ Prior's happy
prediction for the female wits in one of his epilogues is come true
already, when he says,

    Your time, poor souls! we'll take your very money,
    Female _third nights_ shall come so thick upon ye, &c.

and every hour gives one reason to hope that Mr. Pope's glorious
prophecy in favour of the Negroes will not now remain long
unaccomplished, but that liberty will extend her happy influence over
the world;

    Till the _freed Indians_, in their native groves,
    Reap their own fruits, and woo their sable loves.

I will not extend myself in describing the heaps of splendid ruin in
which the rich chapel of St. Lorenzo now lies: since the elegant Lord
Corke's letters were written, little can be said about Florence not
better said by him; who has been particularly copious in describing a
city which every body wishes to see copiously described.

The libraries here are exceedingly magnificent; and we were called just
now to that which goes under Magliabechi's name, to hear an eulogium
finely pronounced upon our circumnavigator Captain Cook; whose character
has attracted the attention, and extorted the esteem of every European
nation: far less was the wonder that it forced my tears; they flowed
from a thousand causes: my distance from England! my pleasure in hearing
an Englishman thus lamented in a language with which he had no
acquaintance!

    By strangers honoured, and by strangers mourn'd!

Every thing contributed to soften my heart, though not to lower my
spirits. For when a Florentine asked me, how I came to cry so? I
answered, in the words of their divine Mestastasio:

    "Che questo pianto mio
    Tutto non è dolor;
    E meraviglia, e amore,
    E riverenza, e speme,
    Son mille affetti assieme
    Tutti raccolti al cor."

    'Tis not grief alone, or fear,
    Swells the heart, or prompts the tear;
    Reverence, wonder, hope, and joy,
    Thousand thoughts my soul employ,
    Struggling images, which less
    Than falling tears can ne'er express.

Giannetti, who pronounced the panegyric, is the justly-celebrated
improvisatore so famous for making Latin verses _impromptu_, as others
do Italian ones: the speech has been translated into English by Mr.
Merry, with whom I had the honour here first to make acquaintance,
having met him at Mr. Greatheed's, who is our fellow-lodger, and with
whom and his amiable family the time passes in reciprocations of
confidential friendship and mutual esteem.

Lord and Lady Cowper too contribute to make the society at this place
more pleasing than can be imagined; while English hospitality softens
down the stateliness of Tuscan manners.

Sir Horace Mann is sick and old; but there are conversations at his
house of a Saturday evening, and sometimes a dinner, to which we have
been almost always asked.

The fruits in this place begin to astonish me; such cherries did I never
yet see, or even hear tell of, as when I caught the Laquais de Place
weighing two of them in a scale to see if they came to an ounce. These
are, in the London street phrase, _cherries like plums_, in size at
least, but in flavour they far exceed them, being exactly of the kind
that we call bleeding-hearts, hard to the bite, and parting easily from
the stone, which is proportionately small. Figs too are here in such
perfection, that it is not easy for an English gardener to guess at
their excellence; for it is not by superior size, but taste and colour,
that _they_ are distinguished; small, and green on the outside, a bright
full crimson within, and we eat them with raw ham, and truly delicious
is the dainty. By raw ham, I mean ham cured, not boiled or roasted. It
is no wonder though that fruits should mature in such a sun as this is;
which, to give a just notion of its penetrating fire, I will take leave
to tell my countrywomen is so violent, that I use no other method of
heating the pinching-irons to curl my hair, than that of poking them out
at a south window, with the handles shut in, and the glasses darkened to
keep us from being actually fired in his beams. Before I leave off
speaking about the fruit, I must add, that both fig and cherry are
produced by standards; that the strawberries here are small and
high-flavoured, like our _woods_, and that there are no other. England
affords greater variety in _that_ kind of fruit than any nation; and as
to peaches, nectarines, or green-gage plums, I have seen none yet. Lady
Cowper has made us a present of a small pine-apple, but the Italians
have no taste to it. Here is sun enough to ripen them without hot-houses
I am sure, though they repeatedly told us at Milan and Venice, that
_this_ was the coolest place to pass the summer in, because of the
Appenine mountains shading us from the heat, which they confessed to be
intolerable with _them_.

_Here_ however, they inform us, that it is madness to retire into the
country as English people do during the hot season; for as there is no
shade from high timber trees, one is bit to death by animals, gnats in
particular, which here are excessively troublesome, even in the town,
notwithstanding we scatter vinegar, and use all the arts in our power;
but the ground-floor is coolest, and every body struggles to get
themselves a _terreno_ as they call it.

Florence is full just now, and Mr. Jean Figliazzi, an intelligent
gentleman who lives here, and is well acquainted with both nations,
says, that all the genteel people come to take refuge _from_ the country
to Florence in July and August, as the subjects of Great Britain run
_to_ the country from the heats of London or Bath.

The flowers too! how rich they are in scent here! how brilliant in
colour! how magnificent in size! Wall-flowers perfuming every street,
and even every passage; while pinks and single carnations grow beside
them, with no more soil than they require themselves; and from the tops
of houses, where you least expect it, an aromatic flavour highly
gratifying is diffused. The jessamine is large, broad-leaved, and
beautiful as an orange-flower; but I have seen no roses equal to those
at Lichfield, where on one tree I recollect counting eighty-four within
my own reach; it grew against the house of Doctor Darwin. Such a
profusion of sweets made me enquire yesterday morning for some scented
pomatum, and they brought me accordingly one pot impelling strong of
garden mint, the other of rue and tansy.

Thus do the inhabitants of every place forfeit or fling away those
pleasures, which the inhabitants of another place think _they_ would use
in a much wiser manner, had Providence bestowed the blessing upon
_them_.

A young Milanese once, whom I met in London, saw me treat a hatter that
lives in Pallmall with the respect due to his merit: when the man was
gone, "Pray, madam," says the Italian, "is this a _gran riccone[Footnote:
Heavy-pursed fellow.]?"_ "He is perhaps," replied I, "worth twenty or
thirty thousand pounds; I do not know what ideas you annex to a _gran
riccone_" "_Oh santissima vergine!_" exclaims the youth, "_s'avessi io mai
settanta mila zecchini! non so pur troppo cosa nesarei; ma questo é
chiaro--non venderei mai cappelli_"--"Oh dear me! had I once seventy
thousand sequins in my pocket, I would--dear--I cannot think myself
_what_ I should do with them all: but this at least is certain, I would
not _sell hats_"

I have been carried to the Laurentian library, where the librarian Bandi
shewed me all possible, and many unmerited civilities; which, for want
of deeper erudition, I could not make the use I wished of. We asked
however to see some famous manuscripts. The Virgil has had a _fac
simile_ made of it, and a printed copy besides; so that it cannot now
escape being known all over Europe. The Bible in Chaldaic characters,
spoken of by Langius as inestimable, and brought hither, with many other
valuable treasures of the same nature, by Lascaris, after the death of
Lorenzo de Medici, who had sent him for the second time to
Constantinople for the purpose of collecting Greek and Oriental books,
but died before his return, is in admirable preservation. The old
geographical maps, made out in a very early age, afforded me much
amusement; and the Latin letters of Petrarch, with the portrait of his
Laura, were interesting to me perhaps more than many other things rated
much higher by the learned, among those rarities which adorn a library
so comprehensive.

Every great nation except ours, which was immersed in barbarism, and
engaged in civil broils, seems to have courted the residence of
Lascaris, but the university of Paris fixed his regard: and though Leo
X. treated with favour, and even friendship, the man whom he had
encouraged to intimacy when Cardinal John of Medicis; though he made him
superintendant of a Greek college at Rome; it is said he always wished
to die in France, whither he returned in the reign of Francis the First;
and wrote his Latin epigrams, which I have heard Doctor Johnson prefer
even to the Greek ones preserved in Anthologia; and of which our Queen
Elizabeth, inspired by Roger Ascham, desired to see the author; but he
was then upon a visit to Rome, where he died of the gout at ninety-three
years old.

June 24, 1785.

St. John the Baptist is the tutelary Saint of this city, and upon this
day of course all possible rejoicings are made. After attending divine
service in the morning, we were carried to a house whence we could
conveniently see the procession pass by. It was not solemn and stately
as that I saw at Bologna, neither was it gaudy and jocund like the show
made at Venice upon St. George's day; but consisted chiefly in vast
heavy pageants, or a sort of temporary building set on wheels, and drawn
by oxen some, and some by horses; others carried upon things made not
unlike a chairman's horse in London, and supported by men, while
priests, in various coloured dresses, according to their several
stations in the church, and to distinguish the parishes, &c. to which
they belong, follow singing in praise of the saint.

Here is much emulation shewed too, I am told, in these countries, where
religion makes the great and almost the sole amusement of men's lives,
who shall make most figure on St. John the Baptist's day, produce most
music, and go to most expence. For all these purposes subscriptions are
set on foot, for ornamenting and venerating such a picture, statue, &c.
which are then added to the procession by the managers, and called a
Confraternity, in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Angel Raphael,
or who comes in their heads.

The lady of the house where we went to partake the diversion, was not
wanting in her part; there could not be fewer than a hundred and fifty
people assembled in her rooms, but not crowded as we should have been in
England; for the apartments in Italy are all high and large, and run in
suits like Wanstead house in Essex, or Devonshire house in London
exactly, but larger still: and with immense balconies and windows, not
sashes, which move all away, and give good room and air. The ices,
refreshments, &c. were all excellent in their kinds, and liberally
dispensed. The lady seemed to do the honours of her house with perfect
good-humour; and every body being full-dressed, though so early in a
morning, added much to the general effect of the whole.

Here I had the honour of being introduced to Cardinal Corsini, who put
me a little out of countenance by saying suddenly, "_Well, madam! you
never saw one of us red-legged partridges before I believe; but you are
going to Rome I hear, where you will find such fellows as me no
rarities_" The truth is, I had seen the amiable Prince d'Orini at Milan,
who was a Cardinal; and who had taken delight in showing me prodigious
civilities: nothing ever struck me more than his abrupt entrance one
night at our house, when we had a little music, and every body stood up
the moment he appeared: the Prince however walked forward to the
harpsichord, and blessed my husband in a manner the most graceful and
affecting: then sate the amusement out, and returned the next morning to
breakfast with us, when he indulged us with two hours conversation at
least; adding the kindest and most pressing invitations to his
country-seat among the mountains of Brianza, when we should return from
our tour of Italy in spring 1786. Florence therefore was not the first
place that shewed me a Cardinal.

In the afternoon we all looked out of our windows which faced the
street,--not mine, as they happily command a view of the river, the
Caseine woods, &c. and from them enjoyed a complete sight of an Italian
horse-race. For after the coaches have paraded up and down some time to
shew the equipages, liveries, &c. all have on a sudden notice to quit
the scene of action; and all _do_ quit it, in such a manner as is
surprising. The street is now covered with sawdust, and made fast at
both ends: the starting-post is adorned with elegant booths, lined with
red velvet, for the court and first nobility: at the other end a piece
of tapestry is hung, to prevent the creatures from dashing their brains
out when they reach the goal. Thousands and ten thousands of people on
foot fill the course, that it is standing wonder to me still that
numbers are not killed. The prizes are now exhibited to view, quite in
the old classical style; a piece of crimson damask for the winner
perhaps; a small silver bason and ewer for the second; and so on,
leaving no performer unrewarded. At last come out the _concurrenti_
without riders, but with a narrow leathern strap hung across their
backs, which has a lump of ivory fastened to the end of it, all set full
of sharp spikes like a hedge-hog, and this goads them along while
galloping, worse than any spurs could do; because the faster they run,
the more this odd machine keeps jumping up and down, and pricking their
sides ridiculously enough; and it makes one laugh to see that some of
them are not provoked by it not to run at all, but set about plunging,
in order to rid themselves of the inconvenience, instead of driving
forward to divert the mob; who leap and shout and caper with delight,
and lash the laggers along with great indignation indeed, and with the
most comical gestures. I never saw horses in so droll a state of
degradation before, for they are all striped or spotted, or painted of
some colour to distinguish them each from other; and nine or ten often
start at a time, to the great danger of lookers-on I think, but
exceedingly to my entertainment, who have the comfort of Mrs.
Greatheed's company, and the advantage of seeing all safely from her
well-situated _terreno_, or ground-floor.

The chariot-race was more splendid, but less diverting: this was
performed in the Piazza, or Square, an unpaved open place not bigger
than Covent Garden I believe, and the ground strangely uneven. The cars
were light and elegant; one driver and two horses to each: the first
very much upon the principle of the antique chariots described by old
poets, and the last trapped showily in various colours, adapted to the
carriages, that people might make their betts accordingly upon the pink,
the blue, the green, &c. I was exceedingly amused with seeing what so
completely revived all classic images, and seemed so little altered from
the classic times. Cavalier D'Elci, in reply to my expressions of
delight, told me that the same spirit still subsisted exactly; but that
in order to prevent accidents arising from the disputants' endeavours to
overturn or circumvent each other, it was now sunk into a mere
appearance of contest; for that all the chariots belonged to one man,
who would doubtless be careful enough that his coachmen should not go to
sparring at the hazard of their horses. The farce was carried on to the
end however, and the winner spread his velvet in triumph, and drove
round the course to enjoy the acclamations and caresses of the crowd.

That St. John the Baptist's birth-day should be celebrated by a horse or
chariot race, appears to have little claim to the praise of propriety;
but mankind seems agreed that there must be some excuse for merriment;
and surely if any saint is to be venerated, he stands foremost whom
Christ himself declared to be the greatest man ever born of a woman.

The old Romans had an institution in this month of games to Neptune
Equester, as they called their Sea God, with no great appearance of good
sense neither; but the horse he produced at the naming of Athens was the
cause assigned--these games are perhaps half transmitted ones from those
in the ancient mythology.

The evening concluded, and the night began with fire-works; the church,
or duomo, as a cathedral is always called in Italy, was illuminated on
the outside, and very beautiful, and very very magnificent was the
appearance. The reflection of the cupola's lights in the river gave us
back a faint image of what we had been admiring; and when I looked at
them from my window, as we were retiring to rest; such, thought I, and
fainter still are the images which can be given of a show in written or
verbal description; yet my English friends shall not want an account of
what I have seen; for Italy, at last, is only a fine well-known academy
figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings according as the
light falls; and our seat affords opportunity. Every man sees that, and
indeed most things, with the eyes of his then present humour, and begins
describing away so as to convey a dignified or despicable idea of the
object in question, just as his disposition led him to interpret its
appearance.

Readers now are grown wiser, however, than very much to mind us: they
want no further telling that one traveller was in pain, and one in love
when the tour of Italy was made by them; and so they pick out their
intelligence accordingly, from various books, written like two letters
in the Tatler, giving an account of a rejoicing night; one endeavouring
to excite majestic ideas, the other ludicrous ones of the very same
thing.

Well 'tis true enough, however, and has been often enough laughed at,
that the Italian horses run without riders, and scamper down a long
street with untrimmed heels, hundreds of people hooking them along, as
naughty boys do a poor dog, that has a bone tied to his tail in England.
This diversion was too good to end with the day.

Dulness, dear Queen, repeats the jest again.

We had another, and another just such a race for three or four evenings
together, and they got an English _cock-tailed nag_, and set _him_ to
the business, as they said _he was trained to it_; but I don't recollect
his making a more brilliant figure than his painted and chalked
neighbours of the Continent.

We will not be prejudiced, however; that the Florentines know how to
manage horses is certain, if they would take the trouble. Last night's
theatre exhibited a proof of skill, which might shame Astley and all his
rivals. Count Pazzi having been prevailed on to lend his four beautiful
chesnut favourites from his own carriage to draw a pageant upon the
stage, I saw them yesterday evening harnessed all abreast, their own
master in a dancer's habit I was told, guiding them himself, and
personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember
right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the
lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that
they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise
of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow sound of
their own hoofs upon the boards of a theatre. I had no notion of such
discipline, and thought the praises, though very loud, not ill bestowed:
as it is surely one of man's earliest privileges to replenish the earth
with animal life, and to subdue it.

I have, for my own part, generally speaking, little delight in the
obstreperous clamours of these heroic pantomimes;--their battles are so
noisy, and the acclamations of the spectators so distressing to weak
nerves, I dread an Italian theatre--it distracts me.--And always the
same thing so, every and every night! how tedious it is!

This want of variety in the common pleasures of Italy though, and that
surprising content with which a nation so sprightly looks on the same
stuff, and laughs at the same joke for months and months together, is
perhaps less despicable to a thinking mind, than the affectation of
weariness and disgust, where probably it is not felt at all; and where a
gay heart often lurks under a clouded countenance, put on to deceive
spectators into a notion of his philosophy who wears it; and what is
worse, who wears it chiefly as a mark of distinction cheaply obtained;
for neither science, wit, nor courage are _now_ found necessary to form
a man of fashion, or the _ton_, to which may be said as justly as ever
Mr. Pope affirmed it of silence,

    That routed reason finds her sure retreat in thee.

Affectation is certainly that faint and sickly weed which is the curse
of cultivated,--not naturally fertile and extensive countries; an insect
that infests our forcing stoves and hot-house plants: and as the
naturalists tell us all animals may be bred _down_ to a state very
different from that in which they were originally placed; that
_carriers_, and _fantails_, and _croppers_, are produced by early
caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of
which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and
shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer
sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be
produced, and happily bred _down_, the clay-cold coxcomb of St.
James's-street.

In Italy, so far at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire
of appearing what one is _not_: no searching for talk, and torturing
expression to vary its phrases with something new and something fine; or
else sinking into silence from despair of diverting the company, and
taking up the opposite method, contriving to impress them with an idea
of bright intelligence, concealed by modest doubts of our own powers,
and stifled by deep thought upon abstruse and difficult topics. To get
quit of all these deep-laid systems of enjoyment, where

    To take our breakfast we project a scheme,
    Nor drink our tea without a stratagem,

like the lady in Doctor Young; the surest method is to drop into Italy;
where a conversazione at Venice or Florence, after the society of
London, or _les petit soupers de Paris_, where, in their own phrase, _un
tableau n'attend pas l'autre_[Footnote: One picture don't wait for
another.], is like taking a walk in Ham Gardens, or the Leasowes, after
_les parterres de Versailles ed i Terrazzi di Genoa_. We are affected in
the house, but natural in the gardens. Italians are natural in society,
affected and constrained in the disposition of their grounds. No one,
however, is good or bad, or wise or foolish without a reason why.
Restraint is made for man, and where religious and political liberty is
enjoyed to its full extent, as in Great Britain, the people will forge
shackles for themselves, and lay the yoke heavy on society, to which, on
the contrary, Italians give a loose, as compensation for their want of
freedom in affairs of church or state.

It is, I think, observable of uncontradicted, homebred, and, as we say,
spoiled children, that when a dozen of them get together for the purpose
of passing a day in mutual amusement, they will make to themselves the
strictest laws for their game, and rigidly punish whatever breach of
rule has been made while the time allotted for diversion lasts: but in a
school of girls, strictly kept, at _their_ hours of permitted recreation
no distinct sounds can be heard through the general clamour of joy and
confusion; nor does any thing come less into their heads than the notion
of imposing regulations on themselves, or making sport out of the harsh
sounds of _rule and government_.

Ridicule too points her arrows only among highly-polished
societies--_Paris_ and _London_, in the first of which all wit is
comprised in the power of ridiculing one's neighbours, and in the other
every artifice is put in practice to escape it. In Italy no such
terrors restrain conversation; no public censure pursues that
fantastical behaviour which leads to no public offence; and as it is
only fear which can beget falsehood, these people seek such behavior as
naturally suits them; and in our theatrical phrase, they let the
character come to them, they do not go to the character.

Let us not fail to remember after all, that such severity as we use,
quickens the desire of pleasing, and deadens the diffusion of immoral
sentiments, or indelicate language, in England; where, I must add, for
the honour of my country, that if such liberties were taken upon the
stage as are frequent in the first ranks of Italian society, they would
be hissed by those who paid only a shilling for their entrance: so that
affectation and a forced refinement may be considered as the bad leaden
statues still left in our delicately-neat and highly-ornamented gardens;
of which elegance and science are the white and red roses: but to be
possessed of their _sweets_, one must venture a little through the
_thorns_.--_Thorns_, though figurative, remind one of the _cicala_, a
creature which leaves nothing else untouched here. Surely their clamours
and depredations have no equal. I used to walk in the Boboli Gardens,
defying the heat, till they had eaten up the little shade some hedges
there afforded me; and till, by their incessant noise, all thought is
disturbed, and no line presented itself to my memory but

    Sole sob ardenti resonant arbusta Cicadis[W];

[Footnote W:
    While in the scorching sun I trace in vain
    Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain,
    The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
    They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.

    DRYDEN.
]

till Mr. Merry's sweet ode to summer here at Florence made one less
discontented,

    To hear the light cicala's ceaseless din,
    That vibrates shrill; or the near-weeping brook
    That feebly winds along,
    And mourns his channel shrunk.

    MERRY.

This animal has four wings, four eyes, and two membranes like parchment
under the hard scales he is covered with; and these, it is said, create
the uncommon noise he makes, by blowing them somewhat like bellows, to
sharpen the sound; which, whatever it proceeds from, is louder than can
be guessed at by those who have not heard it in Tuscany. He is of the
locust kind, an inch and a half long, and wonderfully light in
proportion; though no small feeder, I should imagine, by the total
destruction his noisy tribe make amongst the leaves, which are now
wholly stript by them of all their verdure, the fibres only being left;
and I observed yesterday evening, as we returned from airing, another
strange deprivation practised on the mulberry leaves round the city,
which being all forcibly torn away for the use of the silk-worms, make
an odd fort of artificial winter near the town walls; and remind one of
the wretched geese in Lincolnshire, plucked once a year for their
feathers by their truly unfeeling proprietors. I am told indeed, that
both revegetate, though I trust neither tree nor bird can fail to
experience fatal effects one day or other in consequence of so unnatural
an operation. Here is some ivy of uncommon growth, but I have seen
larger both at Beaumaris castle in North Wales, and at the abbey of
Glastonbury in Somersetshire: but the great pines in the Caseine woods
have, I suppose, no rival nearer than the Castagno a Cento Cavalli,
mentioned by Mr. Brydone. They afford little shade or shelter from heat
however, as their umbrella-like covering is strangely small in
proportion to their height and size; some of them being ten, and some
twelve feet in diameter. These venerable, these glorious productions of
nature are all now marked for destruction however; all going to be put
in wicker baskets, and feed the Grand Duke's fires. I saw a fellow
hewing one down to-day, and the rest are all to follow;--the feeble
Florentines had much ado to master it;

    Seemed the harmful hatchet to fear,
    And to wound holy Eld would forbear,

as Spenser says: I did half hope they could not get it down; but the
loyal Tuscans (evermore awed by the name _principe_) told us it was
right to get rid of them, as one of the cones, of which they bore vast
quantities, might chance to drop upon the head of a _Principettino_, or
little Prince, as he passed along.

I was observing that restraint was necessary to man; I have now learned
a notion that noise is necessary too. The clatter made here in the
Piazza del Duomo, where you sit in your carriage at a coffee-house door,
and chat with your friends according to Italian custom, while _one_
eats ice, and _another_ calls for lemonade, to while away the time after
dinner, the noise made then and there, I say, is beyond endurance.

Our Florentines have nothing on earth to do; yet a dozen fellows crying
_ciambelli_, little cakes, about the square, assisted by beggars, who
lie upon the church steps, and pray or rather promise to pray as loud as
their lungs will let them, for the _anime sante di purgatorio_[Footnote:
Holy souls in purgatory.]; ballad-singers meantime endeavouring to drown
these clamours in their own, and gentlemen's servants disputing at the
doors, whose master shall be first served; ripping up the pedigrees of
each to prove superior claims for a biscuit or macaroon; do make such an
intolerable clatter among them, that one cannot, for one's life, hear
one another speak: and I did say just now, that it were as good live at
Brest or Portsmouth when the rival fleets were fitting out, as here;
where real tranquillity subsists under a bustle merely imaginary. Our
Grand Duke lives with little state for aught I can observe here; but
where there is least pomp, there is commonly most power; for a man must
have _something pour se de dommages_[Footnote: To make himself amends.],
as the French express it; and this gentleman possessing the _solide_ has
no care for the _clinquant_, I trow. He tells his subjects when to go to
bed, and who to dance with, till the hour he chuses they should retire
to rest, with exactly that sort of old-fashioned paternal authority that
fathers used to exercise over their families in England before commerce
had run her levelling plough over all ranks, and annihilated even the
name of subordination. If he hear of any person living long in Florence
without being able to give a good account of his business there, the
Duke warns him to go away; and if he loiter after such warning given,
sends him out. Does any nobleman shine in pompous equipage or splendid
table; the Grand Duke enquires soon into his pretensions, and scruples
not to give personal advice, and add grave reproofs with regard to the
management of each individual's private affairs, the establishment of
their sons, marriage of their sisters, &c. When they appeared to
complain of this behaviour to _me_, I know not, replied I, what to
answer: one has always read and heard that the Sovereigns ought to
behave in despotic governments like the _fathers of their family_: and
the Archbishop of Cambray inculcates no other conduct than this, when
advising his pupil, heir to the crown of France. "Yes, Madam," replied
one of my auditors, with an acuteness truly Italian; "but this Prince is
_our father-in-law_." The truth is, much of an English traveller's
pleasure is taken off at Florence by the incessant complaints of a
government he does not understand, and of oppressions he cannot remedy.
Tis so dull to hear people lament the want of liberty, to which I
question whether they have any pretensions; and without ever knowing
whether it is the tyranny or the tyrant they complain of. Tedious
however and most uninteresting are their accounts of grievances, which a
subject of Great Britain has much ado to comprehend, and more to pity;
as they are now all heart-broken, because they must say their prayers in
their own language and not in Latin, which, how it can be construed
into misfortune, a Tuscan alone can tell.

Lord Corke has given us many pleasing anecdotes of those who were
formerly Princes in this land. Had they a sovereign of the old Medici
family, they would go to bed when _he_ bid them quietly enough I
believe, and say their prayers in what language _he_ would have them:
'tis in our parliamentary phrase, the _men_, not the _measures_ that
offend them; and while they pretend to whine as if despotism displeased
them, they detest every republican state, feel envy towards Venice, and
contempt for Lucca.

I would rather talk of their gallery than their government: and surely
nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as
the apparent contest between Titian's recumbent beauty, glowing with
colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of
symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture
supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can
suggest. These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at
once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation. The
listening slave appears disturbed by the blows of the wrestlers in the
same room, and hearkens with an attentive impatience, such as one has
often felt when unable to distinguish the words one wishes to repeat.
You really then do not seem as if you were alone in this tribune, so
animated is every figure, so full of life and soul: yet I commend not
the representing of St Catharine with leering eyes, as she is here
painted by Titian; that it is meant for a portrait, I find no excuse;
some character more suited to the expression should have been chosen;
and if it were only the picture of a saint, that expression was
strangely out of character. An anachronism may be found in the Tobit
over the door too, by acute observers, who will deem it ill-managed to
paint the cross in the clouds, where it is an old testament story, and
that story apocryphal beside; might I add, that Guido's meek Madonna, so
divinely contrasted to the other women in the room, loses something of
dignity by the affected position of the thumbs. I think I might leave
the tribune without a word said of the St. John by Raphael, which no
words are worthy to extol: 'tis all sublimity; and when I look on it I
feel nothing but veneration pushed to astonishment. Unlike the elegant
figure of the Baptist at Padua, covered with glass, and belonging to a
convent of friars, who told me, and truly, That it had no equal; it is
painted by Guido with every perfection of form and every grace of
expression. I agree with them it has no equal; but in the tribune at
Florence maybe found its superior.

We were next conducted to the Niobe, who has an apartment to herself:
and now, thought I, dear Mrs. Siddons has never seen this figure: but
those who can see it or her, without emotions equally impossible to
contain or to suppress, deserve the fate of Niobe, and have already
half-suffered it. Their hearts and eyes are stone.

Nothing is worth speaking of after this Niobe! Her beauty! her maternal
anguish! her closely-clasped Chloris! her half-raised head, scarcely
daring to deprecate that vengeance of which she already feels such
dreadful effects! What can one do

    But drop the shady curtain on the scene,

and run to see the portraits of those artists who have exalted one's
ideas of human nature, and shewn what man can perform. Among these
worthies a British eye soon distinguishes Sir Joshua Reynolds; a citizen
of the world fastens his to Leonardo da Vinci.

I have been out to dinner in the country near Prato, and what a
charming, what a delightful thing is a nobleman's seat near Florence!
How cheerful the society! how splendid the climate! how wonderful the
prospects in this glorious country! The Arno rolling before his house,
the Appenines rising behind it! a sight of fertility enjoyed by its
inhabitants, and a view of such defences to their property as nature
alone can bestow.

A peasantry so rich too, that the wives and daughters of the farmer go
dressed in jewels; and those of no small value. A pair of one-drop
ear-rings, a broadish necklace, with a long piece hanging down the
bosom, and terminated with a cross, all of set garnets clear and
perfect, is a common, a _very_ common treasure to the females about this
country; and on every Sunday or holiday, when they dress and mean to
look pretty, their elegantly-disposed ornaments attract attention
strongly; though I do not think them as handsome as the Lombard lasses,
and our Venetian friends protest that the farmers at Crema in _their_
state are still richer.

La Contadinella Toscana however, in a very rich white silk petticoat,
exceedingly full and short, to shew her neat pink slipper and pretty
ancle, her pink _corps de robe_ and straps, with white silk lacing down
the stomacher, puffed shirt sleeves, with heavy lace robbins ending at
the elbow, and fastened at the shoulders with at least eight or nine
bows of narrow pink ribbon, a lawn handkerchief trimmed with broad lace,
put on somewhat coquettishly, and finishing in front with a nosegay,
must make a lovely figure at any rate: though the hair is drawn away
from the face in a way rather too tight to be becoming, under a red
velvet cushion edged with gold, which helps to wear it off I think, but
gives the small Leghorn hat, lined with green, a pretty perking air,
which is infinitely nymphish and smart. A tolerably pretty girl so
dressed may surely more than vie with a _fille d' opera_ upon the Paris
stage, even were she not set off as these are with a very rich suit of
pearls or set garnets, that in France or England would not be purchased
for less than forty or fifty pounds: and I am now speaking of the women
perpetually under one's eye; not one or two picked from the crowd, like
Mrs. Vanini, an inn-keeper's wife in Florence, who, when she was dressed
for the masquerade two nights ago, submitted her finery to Mrs.
Greatheed's inspection and my own; who agreed she could not be so
adorned in England for less than a thousand pounds.

It is true the nobility are proud of letting you see how comfortably
their dependants live in Tuscany; but can any pride be more rational or
generous, or any desire more patriotick? Oh may they never look with
less delight on the happiness of their inferiors! and then they will not
murmur at their prince, whose protection of _this_ rank among his
subjects is eminently tender and attentive.

Returning home from our splendid dinner and agreeable day passed at
Conte Mannucci's country-seat, while our noble friends amused me with
various chat, I thought some unaccountable sparks of fire seemed to
strike up and down the hedges as if in perpetual motion, but checked
the fancy concluding it a trick of the imagination only; till the
evening, which shuts in strangely quick here in Tuscany, grew dark, and
exhibited an appearance wholly new to me; whose surprise that no flame
followed these wandering fires was not small, when I recollected the
state of desiccation that nature suffered, and had done for some months.
My dislike of interrupting an agreeable conversation kept me long from
enquiring into the cause of this appearance, which however I doubted not
was electrick, till they told me it was the _lucciola_, or fire-fly; of
which a very good account is given in twenty books, but I had forgotten
them all. As the Florence Miscellany has never been published, I will
copy out what is said of it _there_, because the Abate Fontana was
consulted when that description was given.

"This insect then differs from every other of the luminous tribe,
because its light is by no means continual, but emitted by flashes,
suddenly striking out as it flies; when crushed it leaves a lustre on
the spot for a considerable time, from whence one may conclude its
nature is phosphorick."

    Oh vagrant insect, type of our short life,
    'Tis thus we shine, and vanish from the view;
    For the cold season comes,
    And all our lustre's o'er.

    MERRY's Ode to Summer.

It is said I think, that no animal affords an acid except ants, which
are therefore most quickly destroyed by lime, pot-ash, &c. or any strong
alkali of course; yet acid must the lucciola be proved, or she can never
be phosphorick surely; as upon its analysis that strangest of all
compositions appears to be a union of violent acid with inflammable
matter, whence it may be termed an animal sulphur, and is actually found
to burn successfully under a common glass-bell; and to afford flowers
too, which, by attracting the humidity of the air, become a liquor like
_oleum sulphuris per campanam_[Footnote: Oil of sulphur by the bell.].

The colour of the sky viewed, when one dares to look at it, through this
pure atmosphere is particularly beautiful; of a much more brilliant and
celestial blue I think, than it appeared from the tower of St. Mark's
Place, Venice. Were I to affirm that the sea is of a more peculiar
transparent brightness upon the coast of North Wales than elsewhere, it
would seem prejudice perhaps, and yet is strictly true: I am not less
persuaded that the sky appears of a finer tint in Tuscany than any other
country I have visited:--Naples is however the vaunted climate, and that
yet remains to be examined.

I have been shewed, at the horse-race, the theatre, &c. the unfortunate
grandson of King James the Second. He goes much into publick still,
though old and sickly; gives the English arms and livery, and wears the
garter, which he has likewise bestowed upon his natural daughter. The
Princess of Stoldberg, his consort, whom he always called Queen, has
left him to end a life of disappointment and sorrow by _himself_, with
the sad reflection, that even conjugal attachment, and of course
domestic comfort, was denied to _him_, and fled--in defiance of poetry
and fiction--fled with the crown, to its powerful and triumphant
possessors.

The Duomo, or Cathedral, has engaged my attention all to-day: its
prodigious size, perfect proportions, and exquisite taste, ought to
have detained me longer. Though the outside does not please me as well
as if it had been less rich and less magnificent. Superfluity always
defeats its own purpose, of striking you with awe at its superior
greatness; while simplicity looks on, and laughs at its vain attempts.
This wonderful church, built of striped marbles, white, black, and red
alternately, has scarcely the air of being so composed, but looks like
painted ivory to _me_, who am obliged to think, and think again, before
I can be sure it is of so ponderous and massy, as well as so inestimable
a substance: nor can I, without more than equal difficulty, persuade
myself to give its sudden view the decided preference over St. Paul's in
London, which never, never misses its immediate effect on a spectator,

    But stands sublime in simplest majesty.

The Battisterio is another structure close to the church, and of
surprising beauty; Michael Angelo said the gates of it deserved to be
those which open Paradise: and that speech was more the speech of a good
workman, than of a man whose mind was exalted by his profession. The
gates are of brass, divided into ninety-six compartments each, and
carved with such variety of invention, such elaboration of art and
ingenuity, that no praise except that which he gave them could have been
too high. The font has not been used since the days when immersion in
baptism was deemed necessary to salvation; a ceremony still considered
by the Greek church as indispensable. Why the disputes concerning _this_
sacrament were carried on with more decency and less lasting rancour
among Christians, than those which related to the other great pledge of
our pardon, the communicating with our Saviour Christ in his last
Supper, I know not, nor can imagine. Every page of ecclesiastical
history exhibits the tenaciousness with which the smallest attendant
circumstance on this last-mentioned sacrament has been held fast by the
Romanists, who dropped the immersion at baptism of themselves; and in so
warm a climate too! it moves my wonder; when nothing is more obvious to
the meanest understanding, than that if the first sacrament is not
rightly and duly administered, we never shall arrive at receiving the
other at all. I hope it is impossible for any one less than myself to
wish the continuance or revival of contentions so disgraceful to
humanity in general; so peculiarly repugnant to the true spirit of
Christianity, which consists chiefly in charity, and that brotherly love
we know to have been cemented by the blood of our blessed Lord: yet very
strange it is to think, that while other innovations have been resisted
even to death, scarcely any among the many sects we have divided into,
retain the original form in that ceremony so emphatically called
_christening_.

These observations suggested by the sight of the old font at Florence
shall now be succeeded by lighter subjects of reflection; among which
the first that presents itself is the superior elegance of the language;
for till we arrive _here_, all is dialect; though by this word I would
not have any one mistake me, or understand it as meant in the limited
sense of a provincial jargon, such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, or
Cornwall, present us with; where every sound is corruption, barbarism,
and vulgarity.

The States of Italy being all under different rulers, are kept separate
from each other, and speak a different dialect; that of Milan full of
consonants and harsh to the ear, but abounding with classical
expressions that rejoice one's heart, and fill one with the oddest but
most pleasing sensations imaginable. I heard a lady there call a runaway
nobleman _Profugo_ mighty prettily; and added, that his conduct had put
all the town into _orgasmo grande_. All this, however, the Tuscans may
possibly have in common with them. My knowledge of the language must
remain ever too imperfect for me to depend on my own skill in it; all I
can assert is, that the Florentines _appear_, as far as I have been
competent to observe, to depend more on their own copious and beautiful
language for expression, than the Milanese do; who run to Spanish,
Greek, or Latin for assistance, while half their tongue is avowedly
borrowed from the French, whose pronunciation, in the letter _u_, they
even profess to retain.

At Venice, the sweetness of the patois is irresistible; their lips,
incapable of uttering any but the sweetest sounds, reject all
consonants they can get quit of; and make their mouths drop honey more
completely than it can be said by any eloquence less mellifluous than
their own.

The Bolognese dialect is detested by the other Italians, as gross and
disagreeable in its sounds: but every nation has the good word of its
own inhabitants; and the language which Abbate Bianconi praises as
nervous and expressive, I would advise no person, less learned than
himself, to censure as disgusting, or condemn as dull. I staid very
little at Bologna; saw nothing but their pictures, and heard nothing but
their prayers: those were superior, I fancy, to all rivals. Language can
be never spoken of by a foreigner to any effect of conviction. I have
heard our countryman. Mr. Greatheed himself, who perhaps possesses more
Italian than almost any Englishman, and studies it more closely, refuse
to decide in critical disputations among his literary friends here,
though the sonnets he writes in the Tuscan language are praised by the
natives, who best understand it, and have been by some of them preferred
to those written by Milton himself. Mean time this is acknowledged to
be the prime city for purity of phrase and delicacy of expression,
which, at last, is so disguised to me by the guttural manner in which
many sounds are pronounced, that I feel half weary of running about from
town to town so, and never arriving at any, where I can understand the
conversation without putting all the attention possible to their
discourse. I am now told that less efforts will be necessary at Rome.

Nothing can be prettier, however, than the slow and tranquil manners of
a Florentine; nothing more polished than his general address and
behaviour: ever in the third person, though to a blackguard in the
street, if he has not the honour of his particular acquaintance, while
intimacy produces _voi_ in those of the highest rank, who call one
another Carlo and Angelo very sweetly; the ladies taking up the same
notion, and saying Louisa, or Maddalena, without any addition at all.

The Don and Donna of Milan were offensive to me somehow, as they
conveyed an idea of Spain, not Italy. Here Signora is the term, which
better pleases one's ear, and Signora Contessa, Signora Principessa, if
the person is of higher quality, resembles our manners more when we say
my Lady Dutchess, &c. What strikes me as most observable, is the
uniformity of style in all the great towns.

At Venice the men of literature and fashion speak with the same accent,
and I believe the same quick turns of expression as their Gondolier; and
the coachman at Milan talks no broader than the Countess; who, if she
does not speak always in French to a foreigner, as she would willingly
do, tries in vain to talk Italian; and having asked you thus, _alla
capi?_ which means _ha ella capita?_ laughs at herself for trying to
_toscaneggiare_, as she calls it, and gives the point up with _no cor
altr._ that comes in at the end of every sentence, and means _non
occorre altro_; there is no more occurs upon the subject.

The Laquais de Place who attended us at Bologna was one of the few
persons I had met then, who spoke a language perfectly intelligible to
me. "Are you a Florentine, pray friend, said I?" "No, madam, but the
_combinations_ of this world having led me to talk much with strangers,
I contrive to _tuscanize_ it all I can for _their_ advantage, and doubt
not but it will tend to my own at last."

Such a sentiment, so expressed by a footman, would set a plain man in
London a laughing, and make a fanciful Lady imagine he was a nobleman
disguised. Here nobody laughs, nor nobody stares, nor wonders that their
valet speaks just as good language, or utters as well-turned sentences
as themselves. Their cold answer to my amazement is as comical as the
fellow's fine style--_è battizzato_[Footnote: He has been baptized.],
say they, _come noi altri_[Footnote: As well as we.]. But we are called
away to hear the fair Fantastici, a young woman who makes improviso
verses, and sings them, as they tell me, with infinite learning and
taste. She is successor to the celebrated Corilla, who no longer
exhibits the power she once held without a rival: yet to _her_
conversations every one still strives for admittance, though she is now
ill, and old, and hoarse with repeated colds. She spares, however, now
by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that superiority and
admiration which one day perhaps gave her almost equal trouble to
receive and to repay. But who can bear to lay their laurels by? Corilla
is gay by nature, and witty, if I may say so, by habit; replete with
fancy, and powerful to combine images apparently distant. Mankind is at
last more just to people of talents than is universally allowed, I
think. Corilla, without pretensions either to immaculate character (in
the English sense), deep erudition, or high birth, which an Italian
esteems above all earthly things, has so made her way in the world, that
all the nobility of both sexes crowd to her house; that no Prince passes
through Florence without waiting on Corilla; that the Capitol will long
recollect her being crowned there, and that many sovereigns have not
only sought her company, but have been obliged to put up with slights
from her independent spirit, and from her airy, rather than haughty
behaviour. She is, however, (I cannot guess why) not rich, and keeps no
carriage; but enjoying all the effect of money, convenience, company,
and general attention, is probably very happy; as she does not much
suffer her thoughts of the next world to disturb her felicity in
_this_, I believe, while willing to turn every thing into mirth, and
make all admire _her wit_, even at the expence of _their own virtue_.
The following Epigram, made by her, will explain my meaning, and give a
specimen of her present powers of improvisation, undecayed by ill
health; and I might add, _undismayed_ by it. An old gentleman here, one
Gaetano Testa Grossa had a young wife, whose name was Mary, and who
brought him a son when he was more than seventy years old. Corilla led
him gaily into the circle of company with these words:

    "Miei Signori Io vi presento
      Il buon Uomo Gaetano;
    Che non sà che cosa sia
      Il misterio sovr'umano
    Del Figliuolo di Maria."

Let not the infidels triumph however, or rank among them the
truly-illustrious Corilla! 'Twas but the rage, I hope, of keeping at any
rate the fame she has gained, when the sweet voice is gone, which once
enchanted all who heard it--like the daughters of Pierius in Ovid.

And though I was exceedingly entertained by the present improvisatrice,
the charming Fantastici, whose youth, beauty, erudition, and fidelity to
her husband, give her every claim upon one's heart, and every just
pretension to applause, I could not, in the midst of that delight, which
classick learning and musical excellence combined to produce, forbear a
grateful recollection of the civilities I had received from Corilla, and
half-regretting that her rival should be so successful;

    For tho' the treacherous tapster, Thomas,
    Hangs a new angel ten doors from us,
    We hold it both a shame and sin
    To quit the true old Angel Inn.

Well! if some people have too little appearance of respect for religion,
there are others who offend one by having too much, and so the balance
is kept even.

We were a walking last night in the gardens of Porto St. Gallo, and met
two or three well-looking women of the second rank, with a baby, four or
five years old at most, dressed in the habit of a Dominican Friar,
bestowing the benediction as he walked along like an officiating Priest.
I felt a shock given to all my nerves at once, and asked Cavalier
D'Elci the meaning of so strange a device. His reply to me was, "_E
divozione mal intesa, Signora_[Footnote: 'Tis ill-understood devotion,
madam.];" and turning round to the other gentlemen, "Now this folly,"
said he, "a hundred years ago would have been the object of profound
veneration and prodigious applause. Fifty years hence it would be
censured as hypocritical; it is now passed by wholly unnoticed, except
by this foreign Lady, who, I believe, thought it was done for a joke.

I have had a little fever since I came hither from the intense heat I
trust; but my maid has a worse still. Doctor Bicchierei, with that
liberality which ever is found to attend real learning, prescribed
James's powders to _her_, and bid me attend to Buchan's Domestick
Medicine, and I should do well enough he said.

Mr. Greatheed, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Biddulph, and Mr. Piozzi, have been
together on a party of pleasure to see the renowned Vallombrosa, and
came home contradicting Milton, who says the devils lay bestrewn

    Thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa:

Whereas, say they, the trees are all evergreen in those woods. Milton,
it seems, was right notwithstanding: for the botanists tell me, that
nothing makes more litter than the shedding of leaves, which, replace
themselves by others, as on the plants stiled ever-green, which change
like every tree, but only do not change all at once, and remain stript
till spring. They spoke highly of their very kind and hospitable
reception at the convent, where

    Safe from pangs the worldling knows,
    Here secure in calm repose,
    Far from life's perplexing maze,
    The pious fathers pass their days;
    While the bell's shrill-tinkling sound
    Regulates their constant round.

And

    Here the traveller elate
    Finds an ever-open gate:
    All his wants find quick supply,
    While welcome beams from every eye.

    PARSONS.

This pious foundation of retired Benedictines, situated in the
Appenines, about eighteen miles from Florence, owes its original to
Giovanni Gualberto, a Tuscan nobleman, whose brother Hugo having been
killed by a relation in the year 1015, he resolved to avenge his death;
but happening to meet the assassin alone and in a solitary place,
whither he appeared to have been driven by a sense of guilt, and seeing
him suddenly drop down at his feet, and without uttering a word produce
from his bosom a crucifix, holding it up in a supplicating gesture, with
look submissively imploring, he felt the force of this silent rhetoric,
and generously gave his enemy free pardon.

On further reflection upon the striking scene, Gualberto felt still more
affected; and from seeing the dangers and temptations which surround a
bustling life, resolved to quit the too much mixed society of mankind,
and settle in a state of perpetual retirement. For this purpose he chose
Vallombrosa, and there founded the famous convent so justly admired by
all who visit it.

Such stories lead one forward to the tombs of Michael Angelo and the
great Galileo, which last I looked on to-day with reverence, pity, and
wonder; to think that a change so surprising should be made in worldly
affairs since his time; that the man who no longer ago than the year
1636, was by the torments and terrors of the Inquisition obliged
formally to renounce, as heretical, accursed, and contrary to religion,
the revived doctrines of Copernicus, should now have a monument erected
to his memory, in the very city where he was born, whence he was cruelly
torn away to answer at Rome for the supposed offence; to which he
returned; and strange to tell, in which he lived on, by his own desire,
with the wife who, by her discovery of his sentiments, and information
given to the priests accordingly, had caused his ruin; and who, after
his death, in a fit of mad mistaken zeal, flung into the fire, in
company with her confessor, all the papers she could find in his study.

How wonderful are these events! and how sweet must the science of
astronomy have been to that poor man, who suffered all but actual
martyrdom in its cause! How odd too, that ever Galileo's son, by such a
mother as we have just described, should apply himself to the same
studies, and be the inventor of the simple pendulum so necessary to
every kind of clock-work!

Religious prejudices however, and their effects--and thanks be to God
their almost final conclusion too--may be found nearer home than
Galileo's tomb; while Milton has a monument in the same cathedral with
Dr. South, who perhaps would have given credit to no _human_
information, which should have told him that event would take place.

We are now going soon to leave Florence, seat of the arts and residence
of literature! I shall be sincerely sorry to quit a city where not a
step can be taken without a new or a revived idea being added to our
store;--where such statues as would in England have colleges founded, or
palaces built for their reception, stand in the open street; the
Centaur, the Sabine woman, and the Justice: Where the Madonna della
Seggiola reigns triumphant over all pictures for brilliancy of colouring
and vigour of pencil.

It was the portrait of Raphaelle's favourite mistress, and his own child
by her sate for the Bambino:--is it then wonderful that it should want
that heavenly expression of dignity divine, and grace unutterable, which
breathes through the school of Caracci? Connoisseurs will have all
excellence united in one picture, and quarrel unkindly if merit of any
kind be wanting: Surely the Madonna della Seggiola has nature to
recommend it, and much more need not be desired. If the young and tender
and playful innocence of early infancy is what chiefly delights and
detains one's attention, it may be found to its utmost possible
perfection in a painter far inferior to Raphael, Carlo Marratt.

If softness in the female character, and meek humility of countenance,
be all that are wanted for the head of a Madonna, we must go to
Elisabetta Sirani and Sassoferrata I think; but it is ever so. The
Cordelia of Mrs. Cibber was beyond all comparison softer and sweeter
than that of her powerful successor Siddons; yet who will say that the
actresses were equal?

But I must bid adieu to beautiful Florence, where the streets are kept
so clean one is afraid to dirty _them_, and not _one's self_, by walking
in them: where the public walks are all nicely weeded, as in England,
and the gardens have a homeish and Bath-like look, that is excessively
cheering to an English eye:--where, when I dined at Prince Corsini's
table, I heard the Cardinal say grace, and thought of the ceremonies at
Queen's College, Oxford; where I had the honour of entertaining, at my
own dinner on the 25th of July, many of the Tuscan, and many of the
English nobility; and Nardini kindly played a solo in the evening at a
concert we gave in Meghitt's great room:--where we have compiled the
little book amongst us, known by the name of the Florence Miscellany; as
a memorial of that friendship which does me so much honour, and which I
earnestly hope may long subsist among us:--where in short we have lived
exceeding comfortably, but where dear Mrs. Greatheed and myself have
encouraged each other, in saying it would be particularly sad to _die_,
not of the gnats, or more properly musquitoes, for they do not sting one
quite to death, though their venom has swelled my arm so as to oblige me
to carry it for this last week in a sling; but of the _mal di petto_,
which is endemial in this country, and much resembling our pleurisy in
its effects.

Blindness too seems no uncommon misfortune at Florence, from the strong
reverberation of the sun's rays on houses of the cleanest and most
brilliant whiteness; kept so elegantly nice too, that I should despair
of seeing more delicacy at Amsterdam.

Apoplexies are likewise frequent enough: I saw a man carried out stone
dead from St. Pancrazio's church one morning about noon-day; but nobody
seemed disturbed at the event I think, except myself. Though this is no
good town to take one's last leave of life in neither; as the body one
has been so long taking care of, would in twenty-four hours be hoisted
up upon a common cart, with those of all the people who died the same
day, and being fairly carried out of Porto San Gallo towards the dusk of
evening, would be shot into a hole dug away from the city, properly
enough, to protect Florence, and keep it clear of putrid disorders and
disagreeable smells. All this with little ceremony to be sure, and less
distinction; for the Grand Duke suffers the pride of birth to last no
longer than life however, and demolishes every hope of the woman of
quality lying in a separate grave from the distressed object who begged
at her carriage door when she was last on an airing.

Let me add, that his liberality of sentiment extends to virtue on the
one hand, if hardness of heart may be complained of on the other. He
suffers no difference of opinions to operate on his philosophy, and I
believe we heretics here should sleep among the best of his Tuscan
nobles. But there is no comfort in the possibility of being buried alive
by the excessive haste with which people are catched up and hurried
away, before it can be known almost whether all sparks of life are
extinct or no. Such management, and the lamentations one hears made by
the great, that they should thus be forced to keep _bad company_ after
death, remind me for ever of an old French epigram, the sentiment of
which I perfectly recollect, but have forgotten the verses, of which
however these lines are no unfaithful translation;

    I dreamt that in my house of clay,
    A beggar buried by me lay;
    Rascal! go stink apart, I cry'd,
    Nor thus disgrace my noble side.
    Heyday! cries he, what's here to do?
    I'm on my dunghill sure, as well as you.

Of elegant Florence then, so ornamented and so lovely, so neat that it
is said she should be seen only on holidays; dedicated of old to Flora,
and still the residence of sweetness, grace, and the fine arts
particularly; of these kind friends too, so amiable, so hospitable,
where I had the choice of four boxes every night at the theatre, and a
certainty of charming society in each, we must at last unwillingly take
leave; and on to-morrow, the twelfth day of September 1785, once more
commit ourselves to our coach, which has hitherto met with no accident
that could affect us, and in which, with God's protection, I fear not my
journey through what is left of Italy; though such tremendous tales are
told in many of our travelling books, of terrible roads and wicked
postillions, and ladies labouring through the mire on foot, to arrive at
bad inns where nothing eatable could be found. All which however is less
despicable than Tournefort, the great French botanist; who, while his
works swell with learning, and sparkle with general knowledge; while he
enlarges _your_ stock of ideas, and displays _his own_; laments
pathetically that he could not get down the partridges caught for him in
one of the Archipelagon islands, because they were not larded--_à la
mode de Paris_.

LUCCA.

From the head-quarters of painting, sculpture, and architecture then,
where art is at her acme, and from a people polished into brilliancy,
perhaps a little into weakness, we drove through the celebrated vale of
Arno; thick hedges on each side us, which in spring must have been
covered with blossoms and fragrant with perfume; now loaded with
uncultivated fruits; the wild grape, raspberry, and azaroli, inviting to
every sense, and promising every joy. This beautiful and fertile, this
highly-adorned and truly delicious country carried us forward to Lucca,
where the panther sits at the gate, and liberty is written up on every
wall and door. It is so long since I have seen the word, that even the
letters of it rejoice my heart; but how the panther came to be its
emblem, who can tell? Unless the philosophy we learn from old Lilly in
our childhood were true, _nec vult panthera domari_[Footnote: That the
panther will never be tamed.].

That this fairy commonwealth should so long have maintained its
independency is strange; but Howel attributes her freedom to the active
and industrious spirit of the inhabitants, who, he says, resemble a hive
of bees, for order and for diligence. I never did see a place so
populous for the size of it: one is actually thronged running up and
down the streets of Lucca, though it is a little town enough for a
capital city to be sure; larger than Salisbury though, and prettier than
Nottingham, the beauties of both which places it unites with all the
charms peculiar to itself.

The territory they claim, and of which no power dares attempt to
dispossess them, is much about the size of _Rutlandshire_ I fancy;
surrounded and apparently fenced in on every side, by the Appenines as
by a wall, that wall a hot one, on the southern side, and wholly planted
over with vines, while the soft shadows which fall upon the declivity of
the mountains make it inexpressibly pretty; and form, by the particular
disposition of their light and shadow, a variety which no other prospect
so confined can possibly enjoy.

This is the Ilam gardens of Europe; and whoever has seen that singular
spot in Derbyshire belonging to Mr. Port, has seen little Lucca in a
convex mirror. Some writer calls it a ring upon the finger of the
Emperor, under whose protection it has been hitherto preserved safe from
the Grand Duke of Tuscany till these days, in which the interests of
those two sovereigns, united by intimacy as by blood and resemblance of
character, are become almost exactly the same.

A Doge, whom they call the _Principe_, is elected every two months; and
is assisted by ten senators in the administration of justice.

Their armoury is the prettiest plaything I ever yet saw, neatly kept,
and capable of furnishing twenty-five thousand men with arms. Their
revenues are about equal to the Duke of Bedford's I believe, eighty or
eighty-five thousand pounds sterling a year; every spot of ground
belonging to these people being cultivated to the highest pitch of
perfection that agriculture, or rather gardening (for one cannot call
these enclosures fields), will admit: and though it is holiday time just
now, I see no neglect of necessary duty. They were watering away this
morning at seven o'clock, just as we do in a nursery-ground about
London, a hundred men at once, or more, before they came home to make
themselves smart, and go to hear music in their best church, in honour
of some saint, I have forgotten who; but he is the patron of Lucca, and
cannot be accused of neglecting his charge, that is certain.

This city seems really under admirable regulations; here are fewer
beggars than even at Florence, where however one for fifty in the states
of Genoa or Venice do not meet your eyes: And either the word liberty
has bewitched me, or I see an air of plenty without insolence, and
business without noise, that greatly delight me. Here is much
cheerfulness too, and gay good-humour; but this is the season of
devotion at Lucca, and in these countries the ideas of devotion and
diversion are so blended, that all religious worship seems connected
with, and to me now regularly implies, _a festive show_.

Well, as the Italians say, "_Il mondo è bello perche è
variabile_[Footnote: The world is pleasant because it is various.]." We
English dress our clergymen in black, and go ourselves to the theatre
in colours. Here matters are reversed, the church at noon looked like a
flower-garden, so gaily adorned were the priests, confrairies, &c. while
the Opera-house at night had more the air of a funeral, as every body
was dressed in black: a circumstance I had forgotten the meaning of,
till reminded that such was once the emulation of finery among the
persons of fashion in this city, that it was found convenient to
restrain the spirit of expence, by obliging them to wear constant
mourning: a very rational and well-devised rule in a town so small,
where every body is known to every body; and where, when this silly
excitement to envy is wisely removed, I know not what should hinder the
inhabitants from living like those one reads of in the Golden Age;
which, above all others, this climate most resembles, where pleasure
contributes to sooth life, commerce to quicken it, and faith extends its
prospects to eternity. Such is, or such at least appears to me this
lovely territory of Lucca: where cheap living, free government, and
genteel society, may be enjoyed with a tranquillity unknown to larger
states: where there are delicious and salutary baths a few miles out of
town, for the nobility to make _villeggiatura_ at; and where, if those
nobility were at all disposed to cultivate and communicate learning,
every opportunity for study is afforded.

Some drawbacks will however always be found from human felicity. I once
mentioned this place with warm expectations of delight, to a Milanese
lady of extensive knowledge, and every elegant accomplishment worthy her
high birth, _the Contessa Melzi Resla_. "Why yes," said she, "if you
would find out the place where common sense stagnates, and every topic
of conversation dwindles and perishes away by too frequent or too
unskilful touching and handling, you must go to Lucca. My ill-health
sent me to their beautiful baths one summer; where all the faculties of
my body were restored, thank God, but those of my soul were stupified to
such a degree, that at last I was fit to keep no other company but _Dame
Lucchesi_ I think; and _our_ talk was soon ended, heaven knows, for when
they had once asked me of an evening, what I had for dinner? and told me
how many pair of stockings their neighbours sent to the wash, we had
done."

This was a young, a charming, a lively lady of quality; full of
curiosity to know the world, and of spirits to bustle through it; but
had she been battered through the various societies of London and Paris
for eighteen or twenty years together, she would have loved Lucca
better, and despised it less. "We must not look for whales in the Euxine
Sea," says an old writer; and we must not look for great men or great
things in little nations to be sure, but let us respect the innocence of
childhood, and regard with tenderness the territory of Lucca: where no
man has been murdered during the life or memory of any of its peaceful
inhabitants; where one robbery alone has been committed for sixteen
years; and the thief hanged by a Florentine executioner borrowed for the
purpose, no Lucchese being able or willing to undertake so horrible an
office, with terrifying circumstances of penitence and public
reprehension: where the governed are so few in proportion to the
governors; all power being circulated among four hundred and fifty
nobles, and the whole country producing scarcely ninety thousand souls.
A great boarding-school in England is really an infinitely more
licentious place; and grosser immoralities are every day connived at in
it, than are known to pollute this delicate and curious commonwealth;
which keeps a council always subsisting, called the _Discoli_, to
examine the lives and conduct, professions, and even _health_ of their
subjects: and once o'year they sweep the town of vagabonds, which till
then are caught up and detained in a house of correction, and made to
work, if not disabled by lameness, till the hour of their release and
dismission. I wondered there were so few beggars about, but the reason
is now apparent: these we see are neighbours, come hither only for the
three days gala.

I was wonderfully solicitous to obtain some of their coin, which carries
on it the image of no _earthly_ prince; but his head only who came to
redeem us from general slavery on the one side, _Jesus Christ_; on the
other, the word _Libertas_.

Our peasant-girls here are in a new dress to me; no more jewels to be
seen, no more pearls; the finery of which so dazzled me in Tuscany:
these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin
handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly
enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese
lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close,
with long sleeves _à la Savoyarde_; but it is made often of a stiff
brocaded silk, and green lapels, with cuffs of the same colour; nor do
they wear any hats at all, to defend them from a sun which does
undoubtedly mature the fig and ripen the vine, but which, by the same
excess of power, exalts the venom of the viper, and gives the scorpion
means to keep me in perpetual torture for fear of his poison, of which,
though they assure us death is seldom the consequence among _them_, I
know his sting would finish me at once, because the gnats at Florence
were sufficient to lame me for a considerable time.

The dialect has lost much of the guttural sound that hurt one's ear at
the last place of residence; but here is an odd squeaking accent, that
distinguishes the Tuscan of Lucca.

The place appropriated for airing, showing fine equipages, &c. is
beautiful beyond all telling; from the peculiar shadows on the
mountains. They make the bastions of the town their Corso, but none
except the nobles can go and drive upon one part of it. I know not how
many yards of ground is thus let apart, sacred to sovereignty; but it
makes one laugh.

Our inn here is an excellent one, as far as I am concerned; and the
sallad-oil green, like Irish usquebaugh, nothing was ever so excellent.
I asked the French valet who dresses our hair, "_Si ce n'etait pas une
republique mignonne?_[X]"--"_Ma foy, madame, je la trouve plus tôt la
republique des rats et des souris[Y];_" replies the fellow, who had not
slept all night, I afterwards understood, for the noise those
troublesome animals made in his room.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote X: If it were not a dear little pretty commonwealth--this?]

[Footnote Y: Faith, madam, I call it the republic of the rats and
mice.]

PISA.

This town has been so often described that it is as well known in
England as in Italy almost; where I, like others, have seen the
magnificent cathedral; have examined the two pillars which support its
entrance, and which once adorned Diana's temple at Ephesus, one of the
seven wonders of the world. Their carving is indeed beyond all idea of
workmanship; and the possession of them is inestimable. I have seen the
old stones with inscriptions on them, bearing date the reign of