VERONA.

Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter[36].

A Venetian has no such notions; by force of mind and dint of elegance inherent in it, he pleases himself first, and finds every body else delighted of course, nor would quit his own country except for paradise; while an English nobleman clumps his trees, and twists his river, to comply with his neighbour’s taste, when perhaps he has none of his own; feels disgusted with all he has done, and runs away to live in Italy.

The evening of this day was spent at the theatre, where I was glad the audience were no better pleased, for the plaudits of an ItalianPlatea at an air they like, when one’s nerves are weak and the weather very hot, are all but totally insupportable. What then must these poor actors have suffered, who laboured so violently to entertain us? A tragedy in rhyme upon the subject of Julius Sabinus and his wife Epponina was the representation; and wonderfully indeed did the players struggle, and bounce, and sprunt, like vigorous patients resisting the influence of a disease called opisthotonos, or dry gripes of Jamaica; “Were their jaws once locked we should do better,” said Mr. Chappelow. “Che spacca monti mai!” exclaimed the gentle Padovani.Spacca montemeans just our English Drawcansir, a fellow that splits mountains with his bluster, a captainBlowmedown.

The fair at Padua is a better place for spending one’s time than the theatre; it is built round a pretty area, and I much wonder the middle is not filled by a band of music. Our Astley is expected to shine here shortly, and the ladies are in haste to seeil bel Inglese a Cavallo; but we must be seduced to stay no longer among those whom I must ever leave with grateful regret and truly affectionate regard. Our carriage is repaired, and the mansays it will now carry us safely round the world if we please; our first stage however will be no farther than to pretty

The road from Padua hither is a vile one; one can scarcely make twenty miles a-day in any part of the Venetian state. Its senators, accustomed to water carriage, have little care for us who go by land. The Palanzuola way is worse however, and I am glad once more to see sweet Verona.

Petruchio and Catharine might easily have met with all the adventures related by Grumio on their journey thither, but when once arrived she should have been contented. This city is as lovely as ever, more so than it was last April twelvemonth, when the spring was sullen and backward; every hill now glows with the gay produce of summer, and every valley smiles with plenty expected or pleasure possessed. The antiquities however look lessrespectable than when I left them; no amphitheatre will do after the Roman Colossæum, and our triumphal arch here looked so pitiful, I wondered what was come to it. So must it always happen to the performances of art, which we compare one against another, and find that as man made the best of them, so some man may in some moment make a better still: but the productions of nature are the works of God; we can only compare them with other things done by the same Almighty Master, whose power is equally discernible in all, from the fly’s antennæ to the elephant’s proboscis. Bozza’s collection gave birth to this last sentence; the farther one goes the more astonishing grows his musæum, the neglect of which is sure no credit to the present age. I find his cabinet much fuller than I left it, and adorned with many new specimens from the southern seas, besides flying-fish innumerable, beautifully preserved, and one predaceous creature caught in the very act of gorging his prey, a proof of their destruction being instant as that of the dwellers in Pompeia, who had their dinners dished when the eruption overwhelmed them.

We took leave of our learned friends here with concern, but hope to see them again, and tread the stucco floors so prettily mottled and variegated, they look like the cold mock turtle soup exactly, which London pastry-cooks keep in their shops, ready for immediate use.

What an odd thing is custom! here is weather to fry one in, yet after exercise, and in a state of the most violent perspiration, no consequences follow the use of iced beverages, except the sense of pleasure resulting from them at the moment. Should a Bath belle indulge in such luxury, after dancing down forty couple at Mr. Tyson’s ball, we should expect to hear next day of her surfeit at least, if not of her sudden death. Lying-in ladies take the same liberty withtheirconstitutions, andsaythat no harm comes of it; and when I tell them how differently we manage in England, cry, “mi pare che dev’essere schiavitù grande in quel paese della benedetta libertà[37].” Fine muslin linen nicely got up is however, say they, one of the things to be produced only in Great Britain, and much do our Italian ladies admire it, though they look very charminglywith much less trouble taken. I lent one lady at some place, I remember, my maid, to shew her, as she so much wished it, how the operation of clear-starching was performed; but as soon as it began, she laughed at the superfluous fatigue, as she called it; and her servants crossed themselves in every corner of the room, with wonder that such niceties should be required.—Well they might! for I caught a great tall fellow ironing his lady’s best neck-handkerchief with the warming-pan here at Padua very quietly; and she was a woman of quality too, and looked as lovely, when the toilette was once performed, as if much more attention had been bestowed upon it.

We passed through Mantua the 18th of June, where nothing much attracted my notice, except a female figure in the street, veiled from head to foot, and covered wholly in black; she walked backward and forward along the same portion of the same street, from one to three o’clock, in the heat of the burningsun; her hand held out; but when I, more from curiosity than any better motive put money in it, she threw it silently away, and the beggars picked it up, while she held her hand again as before. This conduct, in any town of England, would be deemed madness or mischief; the woman would be carried before a magistrate to give an account of herself, should the mob forbear to uncase her till they came; or some charitable person would seize and carry her home, fill her pockets with money, and coax her out of the anecdotes of her past life to put in the Magazine; her print would be published, and many engravers struggle for its profits; the name at bottom,Annabella, or the Sable Matron; while novels would be written without end, and the circulating libraries would lend them out all the live-long day. Things are differently carried on however at Mantua: I asked one shopkeeper, and she gravely replied, “per divozione,” and took no further notice: another (to my inquiries, which appeared to him far odder than the woman’s conduct) said, The lady was possibly doing a little penance; that he had not minded her till I spoke, but that perhaps it might be some woman of fashion, who having refused a poorperson roughly on some occasion, was condemned by her confessor to try for a couple of hours what beggingwas, and learn humanity from experience of evil. The idea charmed me; while the man coolly said, all this was only his conjecture; but that such things were done too often to attract attention; and hoped such virtue was not rare enough to excite wonder. My just applause of such sentiments was stopt by thelaquais de placecalling me to dinner; when he informed me, that he had asked about the person whose behaviour struck me so, and could now tell me all there was to be known; she was a lady of quality, he said, who had lost a dear friend on that day some years past, and that she wore black for two hours ever since upon its anniversary; but that she would now change her dress, and I should see her in the evening at the opera. My recollecting that ifthiswere her case, I ought to have been keeping her company (as no one ever lost a friend so dear to them as was my incomparable mother, who likewise left me to mourn her loss on this day thirteen years), spoiled my appetite, and took from me all power of meeting the lady at the theatre.

We went again however to see Virgil’s field, and recollected thattenet nunc Parthenope; congratulated the giants on their superiority over Pietro de Cortona’s paltry creatures, in one of the Roman palaces; and drove forward to Parma, through bad roads enough.

This Mantua is a very disagreeable town; nor was Romeo wrong in lamenting his banishment to it; for though I will not say with him that—

There is no world without Verona’s walls;

yet it must be allowed that few places do unite such various excellencies, and that the contrast is very striking between that city and this.

Parma exhibits an appearance somewhat different from all the rest; yet we should scarcely have visited it but for the sake of the four surprising pictures it contains: theMadona della Scodellais nature itself; and St. Girolamo exhibits such a proof of fancy and fervour, as are almost inconceivable; the general effect, and the difficulty one has to take one’s eye off it, afford conviction of its superiormerit, and greatly compensate for that taste, character, and expression, which are found only in the Caraccis and their school. Corregio was perhaps one of the most powerful geniusses that has appeared on earth; destitute of knowledge, or of the means of acquiring it, he has left glorious proofs of what uninstructed man may do, and is perhaps a greater honour to the human species, than those who, from fermenting erudition of various kinds, produce performances of more complicated worth. The Fatal Curiosity, and Pilgrim’s Progress, will live as long as the Prince of Abyssinia, orLes Avantures de Telemaque, perhaps: and who shall dare say, that Lillo, Bunyan, and Antonio Corregio, were notnaturallyequal to Johnson, Michael Angelo, and the Archbishop of Cambray?—Have I said enough, or can enough be ever said in praise of a painter, whose works the great Annibale Caracci delighted to study, to copy, and to praise?

Piacenza we found to offer us few objects of attention: animprovisatore, and not a very bad one, amused that time which would otherwise have been passed in lamenting ourpaucity of entertainment; while his artful praises of England put me in good humour, spite of the weather, which is too hot to bear. With all our lamentations about the heat however, here is nocicalaon the trees, orlucciolain the hedges, as at Florence; the days are a little longer too, and the crepuscule less abrupt in its departure. How often, upon thePonte della Trinitá, have I secretly regretted the long-drawn evenings of an English summer; when the dewy night-fall refreshes the air, and silent dusk brings on a train of meditations uninspired by Italian skies! In this decided country all that is not broad day is dark night; all that is not loud mirth, is penitence and grief; when the rain falls, it falls in a torrent; when the sun shines, it glows like a burning-glass; where the people are rich, they stick gems in their very walls, and make their chimneys of amethyst; where they are poor, they clasp your knees in an agony of pinching want, and display diseases which cannot be a day survived!

Talking on about Italy in which there is no mediocrity, and of England in which there is nothing else, we arrived at Lodi; where Ibegan to rejoice in hearing the people cryno’ cor’ altr’again, in reply to our commands; because we were now once more returned to the district and dialect of dear Milan, where we have cool apartments and warm friends; and where, after an absence of fifteen months, we shall again see those acquaintance with whom we lived much before; a sensation always delightfully soothing, even when one returns to less amiable scenes, and less productive of innocent pleasure than these have been to me. The consciousness of having, while at a distance, seen few people more agreeable than those one left behind; the natural thankfulness of one’s heart to God, for having preserved one’s life so as to see them again, expands philanthropy; and gives unaffected comfort in the restored society of companions long concealed from one by accident or distance.

21st June 1786.

After rejoicing over my house and my friends; after asking a hundred questions, and hearing a hundred stories of those long left; after reciprocating common civilities, and talking over common topics, we observed how much the general look of Milan was improved in these last fifteen months; how the town was become neater, the ordinary people smarter, the roads round their city mended, and the beggars cleared away from the streets. We did not find however that the people we talked to were at all charmed with these new advantages: their convents demolished, their processions put an end to, the number of their priests of course contracted, and their church plate carried by cart-loads to the mint; holidays forbidden, and every saint’s name erased from the calendar, excepting only St. Peter and St. Paul; whilst those shopkeepers who worked formonasteries, and those musicians who sung or played in oratorios, are left to find employment how they can;—cloud the countenances of all, and justly; as such sudden and rough reforms shock the feelings of the multitude; offend the delicacy of the nobles; make a general stagnation of business and of pleasure, in a country wherebothdepend upon religious functions; and terrify the clergy into no ill-grounded apprehensions of being found in a few years more wholly useless, and as such dismissed.—Well! whatever is done hastily, can scarcely be done quite well; and wherever much is done, a great part of it will doubtless be done wrong. A considerable portion of all this however will be confessed useful, and even necessary, when the hour of violence on one side, and prejudice on the other, is past away; as the fire of London has been found beneficial by those who live in the newly-restored town. Meantime I think the present precipitation indecent enough for my own part; a thousand little errors would burn out of themselves, were they suffered to die quietly away; and when the morning breaks in naturally, it is superfluous as awkward to put the stars out with one’s fingers, like theHours in Guercino’s Aurora[38]. Whoever therefore will be at the pains a little to pick their principles, not grasp them by the bunch, will find as many unripe at one end, I believe, as there are rotten at the other: for could we see these hasty innovators erecting public schools for the instruction of the poor, or public work-houses for their employment; did they unlock the treasure-house of true religion, by publishing the Bible in every dialect of their dominions, and oblige their clergy to read it with the souls committed to their charge;—I should have a better idea of their sincerity and disinterested zeal for God’s glory, than they give by tearing down his statues, or those of his blessed Virgin Mother, which Carlo Borromæo set up.

The folly of hanging churches with red damask would surely fade away of itself; among people of good sense and good taste; who could not long be simple enough to suppose, that concealing Greek architecture with such transient finery, and giving to God’s house the air of a tattered theatre, could inany wife promote his service, or their salvation. Many superstitious and many unmeaning ceremoniesdodie off every day, because unsupported by reason or religion: Doctor Carpanni, a learned lawyer, told me but to-day, that here in Lombardy they had a custom, no longer ago than in his father’s time, of burying a great lord or possessor of lands, with a ceremony of killing on his grave the favourite horse, dog, &c. that he delighted in when alive; a usage borrowed from the Oriental Pagans, who burn even the widows of the deceased upon their funeral pile; and among our monuments in Westminster Abbey, set up in the days of darkness, I have minded now and then the hawk and greyhound of a nobleman lying in marble at his feet; some of our antiquarians should tell us if they killed them.

Another odd affinity strikes me. Half a century ago there was an annual procession at Shrewsbury, called by way of pre-eminenceShrewsbury Show; when a handsome young girl of about twelve years old rode round the town, and wished prosperity to every trade assembled at the fair: I forget what else made the amusement interesting; but have heard my mother tell of the particular beautyof some wench, who was ever after called theQueen, because she had been carried in triumph as such on the day ofShrewsbury Show. Now if nobody gives a better derivation of that old custom, it may perhaps be found a dreg of the Romish superstition, which as many years ago, in various parts of Italy, prompted people to dress up a pretty girl, on the 25th of March, or other season dedicated to the Virgin, and carry her in procession about the streets, singing litanies to her, &c. and ending, in profaneness of admiration, a day begun in idleness and folly. At Rome however no such indecorous absurdities are encouraged: we saw a beautiful figure of theMadonna, dressed from a picture of Guido Rheni, borne about one day; but no human creature in the street offered to kneel, or gave one the slightest reason to say or suppose that she was worshipped: some sweet hymns were sung in her praise, as the procession moved slowly on; but no impropriety could I discern, who watched with great attention.

It is time to have done with all this though, and go see the Ambrosian library; which, as far as I can judge, is perfectly respectable. The Prefect’s politeness kindly offered my curiosity any thing I was particularly anxiousto see, and the learned Mr. Dugati was exceedingly obliging. The old Virgil preserved here with Petrarch’s marginal notes in his own hand-writing, interest one much; this little narration, evidently written for his own fancy to feed on, of the day and hour he first felt the impression of Laura’s charms, is the best proof of his genuine passion for that lady, as he certainly never meant for our inspection what he wrote down in his own Virgil. Here is likewise the valuable MS. of Flavius Josephus the Jewish historian, a curiosity deservedly admired and esteemed: it is kept with peculiar care I think, and is in high preservation: A Syriac bible too, very fine indeed, from which I understand they are now going to print off some copies. I have been taught by the scholars not to think a Syriac bible of the Samaritan text so very rare; but the Septuagint in that language is so exceedingly scarce, that many are persuaded this is the only one extant; and as our Lord, in his quotations from the old law, usually cites that version, it is justly preferred to all others. Leonardo da Vinci’s famous folio preserved in this library, for which James I. of England offered three thousand ducats, anevent recorded here over the chest that contains it on a tablet of marble, deserves attention and reverence: nothing seems above, nothing below, the observation of that prodigious genius. He has in this, and other volumes of the same curious work, apparently put down every painter’s or mathematician’s thought that crossed his imagination. It is aLeonardiana[39], the common-place book of a great and wise man; nor did our British sovereign ever with more good sense evince his true love of learning, than by his princely offer of its purchase.

Till now the looking at friends, and rarities, and telling old stories, and seeing new sights, &c. has lulled my conscience asleep, nor suffered me to recollect that, dazzled by the brightness of the Corregios at Parma, the account of their press, the finest in Europe, and infinitely superior to our Baskerville, escaped me. They have a glorious collection too of bibles in their library; their illuminations are most delicate, and theirbindings pompous, but they possess a modern MS. of such singular perfection, that none of those finished when chirography was more cultivated than it is now, can at all pretend to compare with it. The characters are all gilt, the leaves vellum, the miniatures finished with a degree of nicety rarely found in union, as here, with the utmost elegance and taste. No words I can use will give a just idea of this little MS.: whoever is a true fancier of such things, would find his trouble well repaid, if he left London only to look at it. The book contains private devotions for the duchess with suitable ornaments—I will talk no more of it.

The fine colossal figure of the Virgin Mary in heaven crowned by her Son’s hand, painted in the cieling of some church at Parma, has a bad light, and it is difficult to comprehend its sublimity. One approaches nearer to understand the merits of that singular performance when one looks at Caracci’s copy of it, kept in the Ambrosian library here at Milan. But how was I surprised to hear related as a fact happening tohim, the old story told to all who go to see St. Paul’s cathedral in London, of our Sir James Thornhill, who, while he was intenton painting the cupola, walked backward to look at the effect, till, arriving at the very edge of the scaffold, he was in danger of dashing his brains out by falling from that horrible height upon the marble below, had not some bystander possessed readiness of mind to run suddenly forward, and throw a pencil daubed in white stuff which stood near him, at the figure Sir James’s eyes were fixed on, which provoked the painter to follow him threatening, and so saved his life. Could such an accident have happened twice? and is it likely that to either of these persons it ever happened at all? Would such men as Annibal Caracci and Sir James Thornhill have exposed themselves upon an undefended scaffold, without railing it round to prevent their tumbling down, when engaged in a work that would take them many days, nay weeks, to finish it? Impossible! in every nation traditionary tales shake my belief exceedingly; and what astonishes one more than it disgusts, if possible, is to see the same story fitted to more nations than one.

It is now many years since a counsellor related at my house in Surrey the following narration, of which I had then no doubts, or ideaof suspicion; for he said he was himself witness to the fact, and laid the scene at St. Edmondsbury, a town in our county of Suffolk: how a man accused of murder, with every corroborating circumstance, escaped by the steady resolution of one juryman, who could not, by any arguments or remonstrances of his companions, be prevailed on to pronounce the fellow guilty, though every possible circumstance combined to ascertain him as the person who took the deceased’s life; and how, after all was over, the juryman confessed privately to the judge, thathe himself, by such and such an accident, had killed the farmer, of whose death the other stood accused. This event, true or false, of which I have since found the rudiments in a French Recueil, was told me at Venice by a gentleman as having happenedthere, under the immediate inspection of a friend he named. Quere, whether any such thing ever happened at all in any time or place? but laxity of narration, and contempt of all exactness, at last extinguish one’s best-founded confidence in the lips of mortal man. It is, however, clearly proved, that no duty is so difficult as to preserve truth in all our transactions, while no transaction is so trifling as to precludetemptation of infringing it: for if there is no interest that prompts a liar, his vanity suffices; nor will we mention the suggestions of cowardice, malignity, or any species of vice, when, as in these last-mentioned stories, many fictions are invented by well-meaning people, who hope to prevent mischief, inculcate the possibility of hanging innocence, &c. and violate truth out of regard to virtue.

Well, well! our good Italians here will not condescend to live or lie, if now and then they scruple not to tell one. No man in this country pretends either to tenderness or to indifference, when he feels no disposition to be indifferent or tender; and so removed are they from all affectation of sensibility or of refinement, that when a conceited Englishman starts back in pretended rapture from a Raphael he has perhaps little taste for, it is difficult to persuade these sincerer people that his transports are possibly put on, only to deceive some of his countrymen who stand by, and who, if he took no notice of so fine a picture, would laugh, and say he had been throwing his time away, without making even the common and necessary improvements expected from every gentleman who travels through Italy; yet surely it is a choice delight tolive where the everlasting scourge held over London and Bath, ofwhat will they think?andwhat will they say?has no existence; and to reflect that I have now sojourned near two years in Italy, and scarcely can name one conceited man, or one affected woman, with whom, in any rank of life, I have been in the least connected.

In Naples we see the works of nature displayed; at Rome and Florence we survey the performances of art; at every place in Italy there is much worthy one’s esteem, said the Venetian Resident one day very elegantly; and at Milan there is theAbate Bossi. Should I forbear to addmytestimony to such talents and such virtue, which, expanded by nature to the wide range of human benevolence, he knows how to concentre occasionally for the service of private friendship, how great would be my ingratitude and neglect, while no character ever so completely resembled his, as that of the famousHoughwell known in England by the title of thegoodBishop of Worcester. His ingenuity in composing and placing these words on the 13th of May 1775, is perhaps one of his least valuable jeux d’esprit; but pretty, when one knowsthat on that day the empress was born, on that day the archduke arrived at Milan on a visit to his brother, and on that day the duchess was delivered of a son. The words may be read our way or the Chinese:

What a foolish thing it is in princes to give pain in a place like this, where all are disposed to derive pleasure even from praising them! There is a natural loyalty among the Lombards, which oppression can scarcely extinguish, or tyranny destroy; and, as I have said a thousand times, theypretendto love no one; theydolove their rulers; and, rather grieve than growl at the afflictions caused by their rapacity.

I was told that I should find few discriminations of character in Italy; but the contrary proves true, and I do not wonder at it. Among those people who, by being folded or driven all together in flocks as the French are, with one fashion to serve for the whole society, a man may easily contract a similarity of mannersby rubbing down each asperity of character against his nearest neighbour, no less plastic than himself; but here, where there is little apprehension of ridicule, and little spirit of imitation, monotonous tediousness is almost sure to be escaped. The very wordpolitecomes frompolishI suppose; and at Paris the place where you enjoyle veritable vernis St. Martinin perfection, the people can scarcely be termedpolished, or evenvarnished: they areglazed; and everything slides off theexterieurof course, leaving the heart untouched. It is the same thing with other productions of nature; in caverns we see petrifactions shooting out in angular and excentric forms, because in Castleton Hole dame Nature has fair play; while the broad beach at Brighthelmstone, evermore battered by the same ocean, exhibits only a heap of round pebbles, and those round pebbles all alike.

But we must cease reflections, and begin describing again. We have got a country house for the remaining part of the hot weather upon the confines of the Milanese dominions, where Switzerland first begins to bow her bleak head, and soften gradually in the sunshine of Italian fertility. From everywalk and villa round this delightful spot, one sees an assemblage of beauties rarely to be met with: and there is a resemblance in it to the Vale of Llwydd, which makes it still more interesting tome. But we have obtained leave to spend a week of our destined Villeggiatura at the Borromæan palace, situated in the middle of Lago Maggiore, on the island so truly termed Isola Bella; every step to which from our villa at Varese teems with new beauties, and only wants the sea to render it, in point of mere landscape, superior to any thing we have seen yet.

Our manner of living here is positively like nothing real, and the fanciful description of oriental magnificence, with Seged’s retirement in the Rambler to his palace on the Lake Dambea, is all I ever read that could come in competition with it: for here is one barge full of friends from Milan, another carrying a complete band of thirteen of the best musicians in Italy, to amuse ourselves and them with concerts every evening upon the water by moonlight, while the inhabitants of these elysian regions who live upon the banks, come down in crowds to the shores glad to receiveadditional delight, where satiety of pleasure seems the sole evil to be dreaded.

It is well known that the wild mountains of Savoy, the rich plains of Lombardy, the verdant pastures of Piedmont, and the pointed Alps of Switzerland, form the limits of Lago Maggiore: where, upon a naked rock, torn I trust from some surrounding hill, or happily thrown up in the middle of the water by a subterranean volcano, the Count Borromæo, in the year 1613, began to carry earth; and lay out a pretty garden, which from that day has been perpetually improving, till an appearance of eastern grandeur which it now wears, is rendered still more charming by all the studied elegance of art, and the conveniencies of common life. The palace is constructed as if to realise Johnson’s ideas in his Prince of Abyssinia: the garden consists of ten terraces; the walls of which are completely covered with orange, lemon, and cedrati trees, whose glowing colours and whose fragrant scent are easily discerned at a considerable distance, and the perfume particularly often reaches as far as to the opposite shore: nor are standards of the same plants wanting. I measured one not the largest in the grove, which had been plantedone hundred and five years; it was a full yard and a quarter round. There were forty-six of them set near each other, and formed a delightful shade. The cedrati fruit grows as large as a late romana melon with us in England; and every thing one sees, and every thing one hears, and every thing one tastes, brings to one’s mind the fortunate islands and the golden age. Walks, woods, and terraceswithinthe island, and a prospect of unequalled varietywithout, make this a kind of fairy habitation, so like something one has seen represented on theatres, that my female companion cried out as we approached the place, “If we go any nearer now, I am sure it will all vanish into air.” There is solidity enough however: a little village consisting of eighteen fishermen’s houses, and a pretty church, with a dozen of well-grown poplars before it, together with the palace and garden, compose the territory, which commodiously contains two hundred and fifty souls, as the circuit is somewhat more than a measured mile and a half, but not two miles in all: and we have cannons to guard our Calypso-like dominion, for which Count Borromæo pays tribute to the king of Sardinia; but hashimself the right of raising men upon the main land, and of coining money atMacau, a little town amid the hollows of these rocks, which present their irregular fronts to the lake in a manner surprisingly beautiful. He has three other islets on the same water, for change of amusement; of which that named la Superiore is covered with a hamlet, and l’Isola Madre with a wood full of game, guinea fowl, and common poultry; a summer-house beside furnished with chintz, and containing so many apartments, that I am told the uncle of the present possessor, having quarrelled with his wife, and resolving in a pet to leave the world, shut himself up on that little spot of earth, and never touched the continent, as I may call it, for the last seventeen years of his life. Let me add, that he had there his church and his chaplain, three musical professors in constant pay, and a pretty yatcht to row or sail, and fetch in friends, physicians, &c. from the main land. His nephew has not the same taste at all, seldom spending more than a week, and that only once a-year, among his islands, which are kept however quite in a princely style: the family crest, a unicorn, made in white marble,and of colossal greatness, proudly overlooking ten broad terraces which rise in a pyramidal form from the water: each wall richly covered with orange and lemon trees, and every parapet concealed under thickly-flowering shrubs of incessant variety, as if every climate had been culled, to adorn this tiny spot. More than a hundred beds are made in the palace, which has likewise a grotto floor of infinite ingenuity, and beautiful from being happily contrasted against the general splendour of the house itself. I have seen no such effort of what we call taste since I left England, as these apartments on a level with the lake exhibit, being all roofed and wainscotted with well-disposed shellwork, and decorated with fountains in a lively and pleasing manner. The library up stairs had many curious books in it—a Camden’s Britannia particularly, translated into Spanish; an Arabic Bible worthy of the Bodleian collection, and well-chosen volumes of natural history to a very serious degree of expence. Painting is not the first or second boast of Count Borromæo, but there are some tolerable landscapes by Tempesta, and three famous pictures of Luca Giordano, well known in Londonby the general diffusion of their prints, representing the Rape of the Sabines, the Judgment of Paris, and the Triumph of Galatea. These large history pieces adorn the walls of the vast room we dine in; where, though we never sit down fewer than twenty or twenty-five people to table, all seem lost from the greatness of its size, till the concert fills it in the evening.

It is the garden however more than the palace which deserves description. He who has the care of it was born upon the island, and never strayed further than four miles, he tells me, from the borders of his master’s lake. Sure he must think the fall of man a fable:helives in Eden still. How much must such a fellow be confounded, could he be carried blind-folded in the midst of winter to London or to Paris! and set down in Fleet-street or Rue St. Honoré! That he understands his business so as to need no tuition from the inhabitants of either city, may be seen by a fig-tree which I found here ingrafted on a lemon; both bear fruit at the same moment, whilst a vine curls up the stem of the lemon-tree, dangling her grapes in that delicious company with apparent satisfaction to herself.Another inoculation of a moss-rose upon an orange, and a third of a carnation upon a cedrati tree, gave me new knowledge of what the gardener’s art, aided by a happy climate, could perform. But when rowing round the lake with our band of music yesterday, we touched at a country seat upon the side which joins the Milanese dominion, and I found myself presented with currants and gooseberries by a kind family, who having made their fortune in Amsterdam, had imbibed some Dutch ideas; my mind immediately felt her elastic force, and willingly confessed that liberty, security, and opulence alone give the true relish to productions either of art or nature; that freedom can make the currants of Holland and golden pippins of Great Britain sweeter than all the grapes of Italy; while to every manly understanding some share of the government in a well-regulated state, with the every-day comforts of common life made durable and certain by the laws of a prosperous country, are at last far preferable to splendid luxuries precariously enjoyed under the consciousness of their possible privation when least expected by the hand of despotic power.

St. Carlo Borromæo’s colossal statue in bronze fixed up at the place of his nativity by the side of this beautiful water, fifteen miles from l’Isola Bella, was our next object of curiosity. It is wonderfully well proportioned for its prodigious magnitude, which, though often measured and well known, will never cease to astonish travellers, while twelve men can be easily contained in his head only, as some of our company had the curiosity to prove; but repented their frolic, as the metal heated by such a sun became insupportable. Abate Bianconi bid me remark that it was just the height of twelve men, each six feet high; that it is but just once and a half less than that erected by Nero, which gives name to the Roman Colosseo; that it is to be seen clearly at the distance of twelve miles, though placed to no advantage, as situation has been sacrificed to the greater propriety of setting it up upon the place where he was actually born, whose memory they hold, and justly, in such perfect veneration. I returned home persuaded that the cardinal’s dress, though an unfavourable one to pictures, is very happily adapted to a colossal statue, as the three cloaks orpetticoats made a sort of step-ladder drapery which takes off exceedingly from the offence that is given by too long lines to the eye.

We returned to our enchanted palace with music playing by our side: I never saw a party of pleasure carried on so happily. The weather was singularly bright and clear, the moon at full, the French-horns breaking the silence of the night, invited echo to answer them. The nine days (and we enjoyed seventeen or eighteen hours out of every twenty-four) seemed nine minutes. When we came home to our country-house in the Varesotto, verses and sonnets saluted our arrival, and congratulated our wedding-day.

The Madonna del Monte was the next show which called us abroad; it is within a few miles of our present sweet habitation, is celebrated for its prospect, and is indeed a very astonishing spot of ground, exhibiting at one view the three cities of Turin, Milan, and Genoa; and leading the eye still forward into the South of France. The lakes, which to those who go o’pleasuring upon them, seem like seas, and very like the mouth of our river Dart, where she disgorges her elegantly-ornamented stream into the harbour at Kingsweare,here afford too little water in proportion, though five in number, and the largest fifty miles round. I scarcely ever saw so much land within the eye from any place. That the road should be adorned with chapels up the mountain is less strange: there is a church dedicated to the Virgin at top. We have one here in Italy in every district almost, as the rage ofworshipping on high places, so expressly and repeatedly forbidden in scripture, has lasted surprisingly in the world. Every resting-place is marked, and decorated with statues cut in wood, and painted to imitate human life with very extraordinary skill. They are capital performances of their kind, and most resemble, but I think excel, Mrs. Wright’s finest figures in wax. A convent of nuns, situated on the summit of the hill, where these chapels end in an exceeding pretty church, entertained our large party with the most hospitable kindness; gave us a handsome dinner and delicious dessert. We diverted the ladies with a little concert in return, and passed a truly delightful day.

All the environs of thisVaresottoare very charmingly varied with mountains, lakes, and cultivated life; the only fault in our prospectis the want of water. Had I told my companions of yesterday perhaps, that the view fromMadonna del Montereminded me of Chirk Castle Hill in North Wales, they would have laughed; yet from that extraordinary spot are to be distinctly seen several fertile counties, with many great, and many small towns, and a most extensive landscape, watered by the large and navigable rivers Severn and Dee, roughened by the mountains of Merionethshire, and bounded by the Irish sea: I think that view has scarce its equal any where; and, if any where, it is here in the vicinity of Varese, where many gay villas interspersed contribute to variegate and enliven a scene highly finished by the hand of Nature, and wanting little addition from her attendantArt.

Of the noblemen’s feats in the neighbourhood it may indeed be remarked, that however spacious the house, and however splendid the furniture may prove upon examination, however pompous the garden may be to the first glance, and the terraces however magnificent,—spiders are seldom excluded from the mansion, or weeds from the pleasure-ground of the possessor. A climate so warm wouldafford some excuse for this nastiness, could one observe the inhabitants were discomposed at such an effect from a good cause, or if one could flatter one’s self that they themselves were hurt at it; but when they gravely display an embroidered bed or counterpane worthy of Arachne’s fingers before her metamorphosis, covered over by her present labours, who can forbear laughing?—The gardener in two minutes arriving to assist you up slopes, all flourishing with cat’s-tail and poppy; while your friends cry,—“Here, this is nature! is it not?pure nature!—Tutto naturale si, secondo l’uso Inglese[40].”

Well! we have really passed a prodigiously gayvillegiaturahere in this charming country, where the snowy cap of thegrosSt. Bernard cools the air, though at so great a distance; and we have the pleasure of seeing Switzerland, without the pain of feeling its cold, or the fatigue of climbing itsglacieres: the Alps of the Grisons rise up like a fortification behind us; the sun glows hot in our rich and fertile valleys, and throws up every vegetable production with all the poignantflavour that Summer can bestow; nor is shade wanting from the walnut and large chesnut trees, under which we often dine, and sing, and play attarocco, and hear the horns and clarinets, while sipping our ice or swallowing our lemonade. Thecicalanow feels the genial influence of that heat she requires, but her voice here is weak, compared to the powers she displayed so much to our disturbance in Tuscany; and thelucciolahas lost much of her scintillant beauty, but she darts up and down the hedges now and then. Here is an emerald-coloured butterfly, whose name I know not, plays over the lakes and standing pools, in a very pleasing abundance; the most exquisitely-tinted æphemera frolic before one all day long; and Antiope flutters in every parterre, and shares the garden sweets with a pale primrose-coloured creature of her own kind, whose wings are edged with brown, and, if I can remember right, bears the name ofhyale. But we are not yet past the residence of scorpions, which certainly do commit suicide when provoked beyond all endurance; a story I had always heard, but never gave much credit to.

But I am disturbed from writing my book by the good-humoured gaiety of our cheerful friends, with whom we never sit down fewer than fourteen or fifteen to table I think, and surely never rise from it without many a genuine burst of honest merriment undisguised by affectation, unfettered by restraint. Our gentlemen makeimprovisorhymes, and cut comical faces; go out to the field after dinner, and play at a sort of blindman’s buff, which they call breaking the pan; nor do the low ones in company arrange their minds as I see in compliment to the high ones, but tell their opinions with a freedom I little expected to find: mixed society is very rare among them, almost unknown it seems; but when theydomix at a country place like this, the great are kind, to do them justice, and the little not servile. They are wise indeed in making society easy to them, for no human being suffers solitude so ill as does an Italian. An English lady once made me observe, that a cat never purs when she is alone, let her have what meat and warmth she will; I think these social-spirited Milanese are likeher, for they can hardly believe that there is existing a person, whowould not willingly prefer any company to none: when we were at the islands three weeks ago,—“A charming place,” says one of our companions,—“Cioè con un mondo d’amici cosi[41].”—“But with one’s own family, methinks,” said I, “and a good library of books, and this sweet lake to bathe in:”—“O!” cried they all at once, “Dio ne liberi[42].”—This is national character.

Why there are no birds of the watery kind, coots, wild ducks, cargeese, upon these lakes, nobody informs me: I have been often told that of Geneva swarms with them, and it is but a very few miles off: our people though have little care to ascertain such matters, and no desire at all to investigate effects and causes; those who study among them, study classic authors and learn rhetoric; poetry too is by no means uncultivated at Milan, where the Abate Parini’s satires are admirable, and so esteemed by those who themselves know very well how to write, and how to judge: common philosophy (la physique, as the French call it), geography, astronomy, chymistry, areoddly left behind somehow; and it is to their ignorance of these matters that I am apt to impute Italian credulity, to which every wonder is welcome.

We have now passed one day in Switzerland however, rowing to the little town Lugano over its pretty lake. The mountains at the end are a neat miniature of Vesuvius, Somma, &c.; and the situation altogether looks as a picture of Naples would look, if painted by Brughuel; but not so full of figures. A fanciful traveller too might be tempted to think he could discern some streaks of liberty in the manners of the people, if it were but in the inn-keeper at whose house we dined; this may however be merely my own prejudice, and somebody told me it was so.

We were shewn on one side the water as we went across, a small place called Campioni, which isfeudo Imperiale, and governed by the Padre Abate of a neighbouring convent, who has power even over the lives of his subjects for six years; at the expiration of which term another despot of the day is chosen—appointed I should have said; and the last returns to his original state, amenable however for anyveryshocking thing he may have done during thecourse of his dictatorship; and no complaint has been ever made yet of any such governor so circumstanced and appointed, whose conduct is commonly but too mild and clement. This I thought worth remarking, as consolatory to one’s feelings.

Lugano meantime scorns absolute authority: our Cicerone there, in reply to the question asked in Italy three times a-day I believe—Che Principe fà qui la sua residenza?[43]—replied, that they were plagued with no Principi at all, while the thirteen Cantons protected all their subjects; and though, as the man expressed it, only half of them wereChristians, and the other halfProtestants; no church or convent had ever wanted respect; while their town regularly received a monthly governor from every canton, and was perfectly contented with this ambulatory dominion. Here was the first gallows I have seen these two years. They have a pretty commerce too at Lugano for the size of the place, and the shopkeepers shew that officiousness and attention seldom observed in arbitrary states, where

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