 Chapter 11, Part 2 of Glimpses of Italian Society in the 18th Century, by Hester Lynch Piozzi. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Return to Milan, Part 2, Verona. 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 balance while away is worse, however. And I'm glad once more to see sweet Verona. Patruchio and Catherine might easily have met with all the adventures related by Grimio 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 12 month 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. We took leave of our learned friends here with concern, but hoped to see them again and tread the stucco floors, so prettily mottled and variegated they looked 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 wine in yet after exercise and in a state of most violent perspiration. No consequences followed the use of iced beverages, except the sense of pleasure resulting from them at the moment. Should a bath-bell indulge in such luxury after dancing down forty-couple at Mr Tyson's ball, we should expect to hear next day of her sudden surfeit at least, if not of her sudden death. Lying in ladies take the same liberty with their constitutions and say no harm comes of it. And when I tell them how differently we manage in England, cry, Vi pare che deve essere schiavito grande in quel paese della benedetta libertà. Note, we think there seems to be much slavery required from those who inhabit your fine free country of England. End note. Fine Muslim linen nicely got up is, however, say they, one of the things to be produced only in Great Britain and much to our Italian ladies admire it, though they dealt very charmingly with much less trouble-taken. I lent one lady at some place, I remember, my maid to show her, as she so 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-anchive with the warming pan here at Padua very quietly, and she was a woman of quality, too, and looked as lovely when the toilet was once performed, as if much more attention had been bestowed upon it. Mantua. 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 at the same street from one to three o'clock in the heat of the burning sun, her hand held out. But when I more from curiosity than any better motor put money in it, she threw it silently away, and the beggars picked it up but she held her hand again as before. This conduct in any town of England will be deemed madness or mistrust. The woman will be carried before a magistrate to give an account of herself should the mob forbid her un-case 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 will be published, and many engravers struggle for its profits, the name at the bottom, anabella or disable matron. Our novels will 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 divorcione, 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 poor person roughly on some occasion, was condemned by her confessor to try for a couple of hours what begging was and learn humanity from the 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 stopped by the lucky de Place calling me to dinner, but 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 the day some years past, and that she wore black for two hours ever since upon the anniversary. But that she would now change her dress, and I should see her in the evening at the opera. My recollecting that if this were 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, 13 years, spoiled my appetite, and took from me all power of meeting the lady at the theatre, Piercenza. Piercenza we found to offer us few objects of attention. An improvisatore, and not a very bad one, amused that time which would otherwise have been passed in limiting our paucity of entertainment, while his artful praises of England put me in a good humour, spite of the weather, which was too hot to bear. With all our lamentations about the heat, however, here is no cicada on the trees or luchola on the hedges as of Florence. The days are a little longer too, and the cope is school less abrupt in its departure. How often upon the ponte della Trinità have I secretly regretted the long-drawn evenings of an English summer, when the dewy nightfall 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 I began to rejoice in hearing the people cry Noko-Altre again in reply to our commands because we were now once more returned to the district and dialect of demilane where we have cool apartments and warm friends and where after an absence of 15 months we shall again see those acquaintance with whom we lived once 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. Milan 21st of June 1786 After rejoicing over my house and my friends and 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 15 months how the town was become neater the ordinary people smarter the roads around 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 cartloads to the mint holidays forbidden and every saint's name erased from the calendar accepting only Saint Peter and Saint Paul whilst those shopkeepers who worked for monasteries and those musicians who some were played in oratorias are left to find employment how they can cloud the countenance of all and justly as such sudden and rough reforms shock the feelings of the multitude offend the delicacy of the nobles and make a general stagnation of business and of pleasure in a country where both depend upon religious functions clarify the clergy and to know ill-grounded apprehensions are being found in a few years more wholly useless and as such dismissed well whatever is done hastily can scarce to be done quite well and whether much has done a great part of it will doubtless be done wrong the 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 passed 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 where they suffered to die quietly away and when the morning breaks in naturally it is superfluous as awkward put the stars out with one's fingers like the hours in Guercino's Aurora footnote in the fine ceiling of the Palazzo Luravigia at Rome the hours which surround Aurora's chariot are employed in extinguishing the stars with their hands in footnote whoever therefore will be at pains a little to pick their principles not grasp them by the bunch we'll 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 workhouses for their employment did they unlock the treasure house of true religion by publishing the Bible in every dialect of their dominions and obliged 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 Borromeo 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 theater couldn't any wise promote his service or their salvation many superstitious and many unmeaning ceremonies do die off every day because unsupported by reason or religion Dr. Carpani, a learned lawyer, told me but today that here in Lombardy they had accustomed 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 et cetera that he delighted him 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 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 divinity strikes me half a century ago there was an annual procession at Shrewsbury called by way of preeminence Shrewsbury 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 beauty of some wind who was ever after called the Queen because she had been carried in triumph as such on the day of Shrewsbury 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 other season dedicated the virgin and carry her in procession about the streets singing litanies to her etc and ending in profaneness of admiration the day begun in idleness and folly at Rome however no such indecorous absurdities are encouraged we saw a beautiful figure of the Madonna dressed for a picture of Guido Reni born 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 our good Italians here will not condescend to live a lie if now then they scruple not to tell them no man in this country pretends either to tenderness or indifference when he feels no disposition to be indifferent or tender and so removed are they from all affectation of sensibility or refinement that when the conceited Englishman starts back and pretended rapture from a Raphael he has perhaps little taste for it is difficult to persuade these sincere people that his transports are possibly put on only to deceive some of his countrymen who stand by 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 it surely it is a choice delight to live with the everlasting scourge held over London and Bath of what will they think and what will they say has no existence and to reflect that I have now sojourned nearly 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 there is a natural loyalty among the Lombards with depression can scarcely extinguish or tyranny destroy and as I have said a thousand times they pretend to love no one they do love 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 to be true and I do not wonder at it among those people who by being folded or driven all together in a flock as the French are with one fashion to serve for the whole society a man may easily contract a similarity of manners by rubbing down each asperity of character against his nearest neighbor 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 word polite comes from polish I suppose and a Paris the place where you enjoy the veritable vernis a matin imperfection the people can scarcely be termed polished or even vanished they are glazed and everything slides off the exterior of 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 eccentric forms because in castleton hole dame nature has fair play while the broad beach of Brighamston ever more battered by the same ocean exhibits only a heap of round pebbles and these round pebbles all alike End of chapter 11 part 2 Chapter 12 part 1 of glimpses of Italian society in the 18th century by Hester Lynch Piozzi this LibriVox recording is in the public domain Largo Maggiore returned to Verona part 1 we've 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 every walk and villa around this delightful spot one sees an assemblage of beauties ready to be met with and there is a resemblance in it to the Vale of Chluid which makes it still more interesting to me but we have obtained leave to spend a week of our destined village Gertura the Borromeum Palace, situated in the middle of Largo Maggiore on the island so truly turned iso la bella every step to which from our villa at Verese teams with new beauties and only once the sea to render it in point of view of mere landscape superior to anything we have seen yet our manner of living here is positively like nothing real and the fanciful description of Oriental magnificence with Sager's retirement in the Rambler to his palace on the Lake D'Ambia is all I have 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 13 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 receive additional 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 past disappeared month and the pointed ups of Switzerland formed the limits of Largo 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 Parmaio 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 the studied elegance of art and the conveniences 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 sedrati trees whose glowing colours and his fragrant scent are easily discerned at a considerable distance and the perfume particularly often reaches as far as the opposite shore nor are standards of the same plants wanting I measured one, not the largest in the grove which had been planted 105 years it was a full yard and a quarter round there were 46 of them set near each other and formed in a lightful shade the sedrati fruit grows as large as a late romana melon with us in England and everything one sees and everything one hears and everything one tastes brings to one's mind the fortunate islands and the golden age walks, woods and terraces within the island and a prospect of unequaled variety without 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'm sure it will all vanish into air there is solidity enough however a little village consisting of 18 fishermen's houses and a pretty church with a dozen of well-grown poplars before it together with the palace and garden composed the territory which comodiously contains 250 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 guide our canypso-like dominion for which Count Borromeo pays tribute to the king of Sardinia but has himself the right of raising men upon the mainland and of coining money at my can a little town amid the hollows of these rocks which present their regular fronts to the lake in a manner surprisingly beautiful he has three other islets on the same water for the change of amusement of which that named La Superiore is covered with a hamlet and Liesel Amadre with a wood full of game, guinea fowl and common poultry a summer house beside furnished with chints and containing so many apartments that I'm 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 touch the continent as I may call it for the last 17 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 yacht to row or sail and fetch in friends, physicians, etc. from the mainland his nephew has not the same taste at all seldom spending more than a week in that only once a year among his islands which I 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 having culled to adorn this tiny spot more than a hundred beds are made in the palace which has likewise a water floor of infinite ingenuity and beautiful from being happily contrasted against the general splendor of the house itself I have seen no such effort of what we call taste since I left England as these apartments on the level with the lake exhibit being all roofed and wane-scattered with well-disposed shell work and decorated with fountains in a lively and pleasing manner some 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 to the concert builds 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 he lives in Eden still how much must such a fellow be confounded in the midst of winter to London or to Paris and to sit down in fleet street or cruise St. Honoré that he understands his business so as to need no tuition from the habitants of either city may be seen by a fig tree which I found here engrafted on a lemon both bear fruit at the same moment while a vine curls up the stem of the lemon tree dangling her grapes in that delicious company with the parent satisfaction to herself and other inoculation of a moss rose upon an orange and a third of a carnation upon a cindrati tree gave me new knowledge of what the gardeners 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 with the currents and gooseberries by a kind family who having made their fortune in Amsterdam had imbibed some touch ideas 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 cleared the moon at full the French horns breaking the silence of the night invited Echo to answer them the nine days and we enjoyed 17 or 18 hours out of every 24 seemed nine minutes when we came home to our country house in the Verazotto versus and Sonnet saluted our arrival and congratulated our wedding day of the noblemen seats in the neighborhood 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 would afford some excuse for this nastiness Coppone observed the inhabitants were at such an effect from a good cause or if one could flatter oneself that they themselves were hurt at it but when they gravely display an embroidered beard or counterpane worthy of arachnese fingers before her metamorphosis covered over by her present neighbors who can forbear laughing the gardener in two minutes arriving to assist you up slopes all wishing with a cat's tail and poppy while your friends cried here this is nature is it not pure nature note also natural and pretty quite in the English style but I'm disturbed from writing my book by the good gayity of our cheerful friends with whom we never sit down if you were than fourteen or fifteen to table I think surely never rise from it without many a genuine burst of honest merriment undisguised by affectation or fetid by restraint our gentlemen make improviser rhymes and cut comical faces go out to the field at the dinner and play at a sort of blind man's buff which they call breaking the pan go to the low ones in company arrange their minds as I see and 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 they do mix at a country place like this the great are kind to do them justice and the little not servile they're 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 purrs when she is alone let her have what meat and warmth she will I think these social spirited Milanese are like her but I can hardly believe that there is existing a person who would not willingly prefer any company to none when we were at the islands three weeks ago a charming place says one of our companions note that is with a heap of friends about one in this manner but with one's own family me thinks that I and a good library of books this sweet lake to bathe in oh they cried all at once note oh God keep on from that end note this is national character why there are no birds of the watery kind coot spiled ducks cuggies upon these lakes nobody informs me I've been often told that that a Geneva swarms with them and it is but a very few miles off our people though have little care to ascertain such matters notice her 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 but the Abate Perini satires are admirable and so esteemed by those who themselves know very well to write and how to judge common philosophy la physique as the French call it geography astronomy chemistry are oddly left behind somehow and it is to their ignorance of these matters that I'm apt to impute Italian credulity to which every wonder is welcome Lugano our past one day in Switzerland rowing to the little town Lugano over its pretty lake a fanciful traveller might be tempted to think he could discern some streaks of liberty in the manners of the people if it were but an innkeeper at his house we dined this may however be merely my own prejudice and somebody told me it was so we were shown on one side the water as he went across a small place called Campioni which is Ferro Amperiale 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 exploration of which to him another despot of the day is chosen appointed I should have said and the last returns to his original state amenable however for any very shocking thing he may have done during the course of his dictatorship and no complaint has been ever made yet of any such governor so circumstances and appointed his conduct is commonly but too mild and clement this I thought worth remarking as one's feelings Lugano scorns absolute authority so I did the question asked in Italy three times a day I believe che principi bagui la sua residenza note what Prince makes his residence here end note replied that they were plagued with no principi at all while the 13 cantons protected all their subjects and though as the man expressed it only half of them were Christians and the other half were Christians no church or convent had ever wanted respect while their town regularly received a monthly governor from every canton and was perfectly contented with his ambulatory dominion here was the first gallows I have seen these two years they have a pretty commerce to it Lugano for the size of the place and the shopkeepers show that the mansion seldom observed in arbitrary states where quote content the bane of industry unquote soon needs people to neglect the trouble of getting for the pleasure of spending their money one therefore sees the inhabitants of Italian cities for the most part merry and cheerful or else pious and penitent little attentive to their shops but easily to loiter under their mistresses window with a guitar or rove about the streets at night with a pretty girl under their arms singing as they go or squeaking with the drawl accent if it is the time for masquerades broad avarice ambition are the vices of republican states and a cold climate idleness sensuality and revenge are the weeds of a warm country and monarchical governments if these people are not good they at least wish they were better they do not applaud their own conduct when their passions carry them too far they beat their bosoms at the foot of a crucifix in the street with no more hypocrisy than they beat a tambourine there perhaps with no more effect neither if no alteration of behaviour succeeds their contrition yet when an Englishman who was probably more ashamed of repenting than of sinning accuses them of false pretensions to pious fervour he wrongs them and would do well to repent himself end of chapter 12 part 1 chapter 12 part 2 of glimpses of Italian society in the 18th century by Hester Lynch Piozzi this libybox recording is in the public domain maggiore returned to Verona part 2 bergamot bergamot is built up a steep hill like lands downroaded by the buildings not so regular the prospect not inferior but of a different kind resembling that one seized from Mutum Hill in Kent but richer and presenting a variety beyond credibility scarce any water can be seen and that the plains of Lombardy are low and flat within the eye however one may count all the original blessings bestowed on humankind horn, wine, oil and fruit the enclosures being small too and the trees profus as the French call it no parterre was ever more beautifully disposed one of the fields surveyed from the summit of the hill where stands the Marquis's palace elegantly sheltered by a still higher rising ground behind it and commanding from every window of its stately front a view of prodigious extent and almost unmatched beauty as the diversification of colouring reminds one of nothing but the fine pavement at the Roman pantheon so curiously intersected are the patches grass and grain, flax and vines, arable and tilth in this happy disposition of earth and its most valuable products while not a hedge failed to afford perfume that fills the very air with fragrance from the sweet jesemond that twisting through it lends a weak support to the wild grapes which dangling in clusters in by ten thousand birds of the European species I believe below the size of a pigeon nor is the taking of these creatures by the rocolo to be left out from among the amusements of Brasian and Begamasque nobility nor is the eating of them when taken to be despised. Becaficos and Autolens are here in high perfection and it was from these northern districts of Italy I trust that Battalius and all the relaxing gluttons of antiquity got their curious dishes of singing bird pie etc. The rich scent of melons at every cottage door is another delicious proof of the climate's fertility and opulence where every sense is lost in every joy as Hughes expresses it and where in the delightful villa of our highly accomplished acquaintance the Marquis of Araceli we have passed ten days in all the pleasures which wit could invent, money, purchase or friendship bestow. The last nobleman who resided here farther to the present lord was Cavalier Cervante to the immortal Clalia Borromeo. His virtues and varieties of excellence would fill a volume could I clear my head of prejudice for such excellence as I find here and my heart of partial regard which is in reality but grateful friendship just led you from me for so many favours received could I forget that we are now once more in the state of Venice where everything assumes an air of cheerfulness unknown to other places I might perhaps perceive that the fair at Bergamo differs little from a fair in England except that these cattle are whiter and ours larger how a score of good use now as Master Shallow says but I really did ask the price of a pair of good strong oxen for work and heard it was ten zikinis about half the price given of black water but ours are stutter and capable of rougher service it is strange to me where these creatures are kept all the rest of the year except at fair time one very seldom sees them and there's an actual employment of carting plowing etc nothing is so little animated by the sight of living creatures as an Italian prospect no sheep upon their hills no cattle grazing in their meadows no waterfowl swans ducks etc upon their lakes and when you leave Lombardy no birds flying in the air save only from time to time betwixt Florence and Bologna a solitary kite soaring over the Surly Appanines and breaking the immense void which fatigues the eye a ragged lad or wench too now and then leading a lean cow to pick among the hedges has a melancholy appearance the more so as it is always held fast by a string it struggles in vain to get loose these however are only consequences of luxuriant plenty for where the farmer makes four harvests of his grass and every other speck of ground is profitably covered with grain vines etc all possibility of open pasture which is precluded horses too so ornamental in an English landscape will never be set loose in an Italian one as they are all chevaux entier and cannot be trusted in troops together as ours are even if there was ground unenclosed for them to graze on like the common lands in Great Britain a nobleman's park is another object never to be seen or expected in a country where people would really be deserving much blame did they retain in their hands for mere amusement ten or twelve miles circuit of earth capable to produce two or three thousand pounds a year profit to their families beside making many tenants rich and happy in the meantime I will confess however that the absence of all these agreement gives a flatness and uniformity to the views which we cannot complain of in England but when Italians consider the cause they would have reason to be satisfied with the effect especially when vegetable nature flourishes in full perfection by every step crushes out perfume from the trodden herbs and those in the hedges dispense with delightful liberality of fragrance that enchants them hops and pyrocanthus cover the sides of every cottage and these scent of truffles attracts in the odor of melons gratifies one's nerves when driving among the habitations of fertile lombardy belan we are now cutting hay here for the last time this season and all the environs smell like spring on this 15th of September 1786 the autumnal tent however falls fast upon the trees which are already rich with the deep yellow hue a wintry feel upon the atmosphere early in the morning it looks about noon and a hollow wind towards the approach of night make it look like the very last week of October in England a mourness that summer is going the same circumstances prompt me whom I am about to forsake this her favourite region to provide furs flannels etc for the passing of those elps which look so formidable when covered with snow even at their present distance our swallows are calling their clamorous council around me while I write but the butterflies still flutter about in the middle of the day the grapes are going more wholesome as with us when the mornings begin to be frosty a desert however do not remind us of Tuscany the cherries here are not particularly fine and the peaches all part from the stone miserable things an English gardener would not send them to table the figs too were infinitely finer at leghorn and nectarines have I never seen at all well here is the opera begun again some merry wag about a cast I think has accommodated and adapted the old story of King Theodore to put in ridicule the present King of Sweden who is hated of the emperor for some political reasons of a get what and he of course patronizes the gesture our honest lombards however take no delight in mimicry and feel more discussed than pleasure when simplicity is insulted or distress made more corrosive by the bitterness of a scoffing spirit I have tried to see whether they would laugh at any oddity in their neighbour's manner but never could catch any except perhaps now and then a sly Roman who had a liking for it I see nothing absurd about the man says one gentleman everybody may have some peculiarity and most people have but such things make me no sport let us when we have a mind to laugh go and laugh at Punchinello from such critics therefore the King of Sweden is safe enough as they have not yet acquired the taste of hunting down royalty and crowing with infantile malice when possessed of the mean hope that they are able to pinch a noble heart this old fashioned country which detests the sight of suffering majesty his office theater performance calculated to divert them at the expense of a sovereign prince his character is clear from blame and his personal weaknesses are protected by his birth and merit while it is to his open, free and politely generous behaviour alone they owe the knowledge that he has such boy builds Paziello therefore cannot drive it down by his best music though the poor king of Sweden is a Lutheran too and if anything would make them meet him that would one by so ever sometimes prevents the commission of another and that same prevailing idea which prompts these prejudiced Romanists to conclude him doomed to everlasting torments who dares differ from them though in points of no real importance inspires them at the same time with such compassion for his supposed state of predestinated punishment is they rather inclined to defend him from further misery and kindly forbade to heap ridicule in this world upon a person who was sure to suffer eternal damnation in the other but the Spanish grandee who not only entertained but astonished us all one night with his conversation of Corini's casino in Venice is arrived here at Malayan and plays upon the violin he challenged acquaintance with this in the street Huff invited himself to our private concert last night and did us the honor to perform there with the skill of a professor the eager desire of Adela Tanti and the tediousness of a solitary student he continued to amaze delight and fatigues before long hours together he's a man of predigious talents and replete with variety of knowledge a new dance has been tried out here too but was not well received though it represents the terrible story which under Madame de Jean-Lise-Pen had such uncommon success among the reading world and is called La Cebolta Viva but as the duchess Gerefalco whose misfortune it commemorates is still alive the pantomime will probably be suppressed Gerefalco has relations at Malayan it seems and one lady distinguished for elegance of form and charms of voice and manner told me yesterday with equal sweetness spirit and propriety that though the king of Naples sent his soldiers to free his aunt from that horrible dungeon where she had been nine years confined yet if her miseries were to become the subject of stage representation she could hardly be even at ease with these reflections and many others excited by gratitude to private friends and general admiration of a country so justly esteemed we shall soon take our leave of Malayan famed for her truly hospitable disposition a temper of mind sometimes abused by travellers perhaps his birth and pretensions are seldom or ever inquired into whilst no people are more careful of keeping their rank in violet by never conversing unequal terms with the countrymen and woman of their own who cannot produce a proper length of ancestry I will not leave them though without another word or two about their language which though it sounded strangely course and broad to be sure as we returned home from Florence Rome and Venice I felt sincerely glad to hear again and have some notion by their way of pronouncing picchiere word used here to express everything that holds water that our picture was probably derived from it and the Abbate di Vecchio a polite scholar and an uncommonly agreeable companion seemed to think so too his knowledge of the English language joined to the singular power he has over his own elegant Tuscan tongue made me torment him with a variety of inquiries about these confusing dialects which leave me at last little chance to understand any whilst a child is called Bambino at Florence Putto at Venice Sciato at Bergamo and Creatura at Rome and at Milan they call a wench Tosa an apron is Grimbiule at Florence I think Traversa at Venice Biggarol at Brescia and some other parts of Lombardy Senale at Rome and at Milan Scorza a foreigner may well be distracted by varieties so striking but the turn and idiom differ ten times more still and I love to hear our Milanese call an oak robo rather than cherella somehow and tell a lady when dressed in white the tears Tuta in albedone Barona but it is time to leave all this and rejoice my third arrival at gay cheerful charming Barona with some sweet leave taking verses of followed us written by the fascist Sabate Ravazi a native of Rome but for many years an inhabitant of Milan his agreeable sonner should be lying ending with toto being upon a subject of general importance would serve as a better specimen of his abilities than lines dictated only by partial friendship but I hear that is already circulated about the world and printed in one of our magazines to them let him trust his fame they will pay my just debts we have now seen this enchanting spot in spring summer and autumn nor could winter self render it underlightful while uniting every charm and gratifying every sense Greek and Roman antiquities salute one of the gates Gothic remains render each place of worship venerable nature in her holiday dress decks the environs and society animates with intellectual fire the amiable inhabitants improvisation at this place pleases me far better than it did in Tuscany I truly learned about a Lorenzi astonishers all who hear him by repeating not singing a series of admirably just and well-digested thoughts which he and he alone possesses the power of arranging suddenly as if by magic and methodically as if by study to rhymes the most melodious and most varied while the abbey Bert Holler of the University of Pavia gives one pleasure by the same talent in a manner totally different singing his unpremeditated strains to the accompaniment of a harpsichord round which stand a little chorus of friends who interpolate from time to time two lines of a well-known song to which he pleasingly adapts his compositions and goes on gracing the barren subject and adorning it with every possible decoration of wit and every desirable elegance of sentiment nothing can surely surpass the happy promptitude of his expression unless it is the brilliancy of his genius but I will not be seduced by the pleasures of praising my sweet friends of Arona to lengthen this chapter with further panagery upon a place I leave with the truest tenderness and with the sincerest regret but the correspondence I hope long to maintain with the charming contestant Mosconi must compensate what it can for the loss of her agreeable coterie where my most delightful evenings have been spent where so many topics of English literature have been discussed where Lorenzi read Tasso to us of an afternoon Bert Holler made verses and the Cavalier Pinde Monte conversed where the three graces as they are called joined their sweet voices to sing when satiety of pleasure made us change our mode of being happy and kept one from ever wishing to hear anything else by Countess Caminati, Zangbianchi's duets with the only tenor fit to accompany a voice so touching and taste so refined his creed as a ipsum non amat note whoever sees the without being smitten with extraordinary passion must I think be incapable of loving even himself end note indeed I never saw people live so pleasingly together as these do the women apparently delighting in each other's company without mean rivalry or envy of those accomplishments which are commonly bestowed by heaven with diversity enough for all to have this share the world surely affords room for everybody's talents would everybody that possessed them but think so and were malice and affectation once completely banished from cultivated society Verona might be found in many places perhaps she is now confined I think to the sweet state of Venice chapter 12 part 2 end of Grimces of Italian society in the 18th century by Hester Lynch Pianzi