English one; and that sounds have a directly contrary effect upon one and the other. Farinelli, at Paris, said to have a fine manner, but no voice. Grand ballet, in which there is no seeing the dance for petticoats. Old women with flowers and jewels stuck in the curls of their grey hair. Red-heeled shoes and roll-ups innumerable; hoops and panniers immeasurable, paint unspeakable. Tables, wherein is calculated, with the utmost exactness, the several degrees of red, now in use, from the rising blushes of an advocate's wife, to the flaming crimson of a princess of the blood; done by a limner in great vogue.

The author takes unto him a taylour; his character. How he covers him with silk and fringe, and widens his figure with buckram, a yard on each side. Waistcoat and breeches so strait, he can neither breathe nor walk. How the barber curls him en bequille, and à la negligèe, and ties a vast solitaire about his neck. How the milliner lengthens his ruffles to his fingers' ends, and sticks his two arms into a muff. How he cannot stir; and how they cut him in proportion to his clothes.

VI

He is carried to Versailles, despises it infinitely. A dissertation upon taste. Goes to an installation in the Chapel Royal: enter the king and fifty fiddlers solus; kettle-drums and trumpet; queens and dauphins; princesses and cardinals; incense and the mass; old knights making curtsies; Holy Ghosts and fiery tongues.

VII

Goes into the country to Rheims, in Champagne, stays there three months; what he did there (he must beg the reader's pardon but) he has really forgot.

VIII

Proceeds to Lyons, vastness of that city. Can't see the streets for houses. How rich it is, and how much it stinks. Poem upon the confluence of the Rhone and the Sâone, by a friend of the author's; very pretty.

IX

Makes a journey into Savoy, and in his way visits the Grande Chartreuse he is set aside upon a mule's back, and begins to climb up the mountains: rocks and torrents beneath, pine trees and snows above: horrours and terrours on all sides. The author dies of the fright.

X

He goes to Geneva. His mortal antipathy to a presbyterian, and the cure for it. Returns to Lyons; gets a surfeit with eating ortolans and lampreys; is advised to go into Italy for the benefit of the air.

XI

Sets out the latter end of November to cross the Alps. He is devoured by a wolf; and how it is to be devoured by a wolf: the seventh day he comes to the foot of Mount Cenis. How he is wrap'd up in bear-skins and beaver-skins; boots on his legs; caps on his head; muffs on his hands, and taffety over his eyes. He is placed on a bier, and is carried to heaven by the savages blindfold. How he lights among a certain nation called Clouds; how they are always in a sweat, and never speak, but they grunt; how they flock about him, and think him very odd for not doing so too. He falls plump into Italy.

XII

Arrives at Turin: goes to Genoa, and from thence to Placentia; crosses the river Trebia. The ghost of Hannibal appears to him, and what it and he say upon the occasion. Locked out of Parma on a cold winter's night; the author, by an ingenious stratagem, gains admittance. Despises that city, and proceeds through Reggio to Modena. How the duke and dutchess lie over their own stables, and go every night to a vile Italian comedy; despises them and it, and proceeds to Bologna.

XIII

Enters into the dominions of the Pope o'Rome. Meets the devil, and what he says on the occasion. Very publick and scandalous doings between the vine and the elm trees, and how

the olive trees are shocked thereupon. Author longs for Bologna sausages and hams, and how he grows as fat as an hog.

XIV

Observations on antiquities. The author proves that Bologna was the ancient Tarentum; that the battle of Salamis, contrary to the vulgar opinion, was fought by land, and that not far from Ravenna; that the Romans were a colony of the Jews; and that Eneas was the same with Ehud.

XV

Arrival at Florence. Is of opinion that the Venus of Medicis is a modern performance, and that a very indifferent one, and much inferior to the K. Charles at Charing-cross. Account of the city and manners of the inhabitants. A learned dissertation on the true situation of Gomorrah.

And here will end the first part of these instructive and entertaining voyages. The subscribers are to pay twenty guineas, nineteen down, and the remainder upon delivery of the book. N.B. A few are printed on the softest royal brown paper, for the use of the curious.

MY DEAR, DEAR WHARTON,

(Which is a dear more than I give anybody else. It is very odd to begin with a parenthesis, but) You may think me a beast not having sooner wrote to you, and to be sure a beast I am. Now, when one owns it, I don't see what you have left to say. I take this opportunity to inform you (an opportunity I have had every week this twelvemonth) that I am arrived safe at Calais, and am at present at-Florence, a city in Italy, in I don't know how many degrees of N. latitude. Under the line I am sure it is not, for I am at this instant expiring with cold. You must know, that not being certain what circumstances of my history would particularly suit your curiosity, and knowing that all I had to say to you would overflow the narrow limits of many a good quire of paper, I have taken this method of laying before you the contents, that you may pitch upon what you please, and give me your orders accordingly to expatiate thereupon: : for I conclude you will write to me: won't you? oh! yes, when you know that in a week I set out for Rome, and that the pope is dead, and that I shall be (I should say, God willing;

and if nothing extraordinary intervene; and if I am alive and well; and in all human probability) at the coronation of a new one. Now, as you have no other correspondent there, and as if you do not, I certainly shall not write again. (Observe my impudence.) I take it to be your interest to send me a vast letter, full of all sorts of news and politics, and such other ingredients, as to you shall seem convenient with all decent expedition, only do not be too severe upon the Pretender; and if you like my style, pray say so. This is à la Françoise; and if you think it a little too foolish, and impertinent, you shall be treated alla Toscana with a thousand Signoria Illustrissimas, in the mean time I have the honour to remain

P.S. This is à l'Angloise. I don't know where you are; if at Cambridge pray let me know all, how, and about it: and if my old friends, Thomson or Clarke, fall in your way, say I am extremely theirs. But if you are in town, I entreat you to make my best compliments to Mrs. Wharton. Adieu.

Yours, sincerely, a second time.

XXIII.-MR. GRAY TO HIS MOTHER

FLORENCE, March 19, 1740.

THE pope 1 is at last dead, and we are to set out for Rome on Monday next. The conclave is still sitting there, and likely to continue so some time longer, as the two French cardinals are but just arrived, and the German ones are still expected. It agrees mighty ill with those that remain inclosed: Ottoboni is already dead of an apoplexy; Alteiri and several others are said to be dying, or very bad: yet it is not expected to break up till after Easter. We shall lie at Sienna the first night, spend a day there, and in two more get to Rome. One begins to see in this country the first promises of an Italian spring, clear unclouded skies, and warm suns, such as are not often felt in England; yet, for your sake, I hope at present you have your proportion of them, and that all your frosts, and snows, and short breaths are, by this time, utterly vanished. I have nothing new or particular to inform you of; and, if you see things at home go on much in their old course, you must not imagine

1 Clement the Twelfth.

them more various abroad. Lent are composed of a sermon in the morning, full of hell and the devil; a dinner at noon, full of fish and meagre diet; and, in the evening, what is called a conversazione, a sort of assembly at the principal people's houses, full of I cannot tell what: besides this, there is twice a week a very grand concert.

The diversions of a Florentine

...

XXIV. MR. GRAY TO HIS MOTHER

ROME, April 2, N.S. 1740.

THIS is the third day since we came to Rome, but the first hour I have had to write to you in. The journey from Florence cost us four days, one of which was spent at Sienna, an agreeable, clean, old city, of no great magnificence or extent; but in a fine situation, and good air. What it has most considerable is its cathedral, a huge pile of marble, black and white laid alternately, and laboured with a gothic niceness and delicacy in the oldfashioned way. Within too are some paintings and sculpture of considerable hands. The sight of this, and some collections that were shewed us in private houses, were a sufficient employment for the little time we were to pass there; and the next morning we set forward on our journey through a country very oddly composed; for some miles you have a continual scene of little mountains cultivated from top to bottom with rows of olive-trees, or else elms, each of which has its vine twining about it, and mixing with the branches; and corn sown between all the ranks. This diversified with numerous small houses and convents, makes the most agreeable prospect in the world: but, all of a sudden, it alters to black barren hills, as far as the eye can reach, that seem never to have been capable of culture, and are as ugly as useless. Such is the country for some time before one comes to Mount Radicofani, a terrible black hill, on the top of which we were to lodge that night. It is very high, and difficult of ascent; and at the foot of it we were much embarrassed by the fall of one of the poor horses that drew us. This accident obliged another chaise, which was coming down, to stop also; and out of it peeped a figure in a red cloak, with a handkerchief tied round its head, which, by its voice and mien, seemed a fat old woman; but, upon its getting out, appeared to be Senesino, who was returning from Naples to Sienna, the place of his birth and residence. On the highest part of the mountain is an old fortress, and near it a house built by one of