MILAN.

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 for monasteries, 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 where

_both_ depend 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 the Hours 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 in any wife promote his service, or their salvation.

Many superstitious and many unmeaning ceremonies _do_ die 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-eminence _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 wench, 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, 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 the _Madonna_, 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 anxious to 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, an event 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 a _Leonardiana_[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 their bindings 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 to

_him_, 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 intent on 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 idea of

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, that _he 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 happened _there_, 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 preclude temptation 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

to live where 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 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 the _Abate Bossi_. Should I forbear to add _my_

testimony 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 famous _Hough_ well known in England by the title of

the _good_ Bishop 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 knows that 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:

Natalis Adventus Partus

Matris Fratris Conjugis

Felix Optatus Incolumis

Principem Aulam Urbem

Lectificabant.

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,

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 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 manners by 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 word _polite_ comes from _polish_ I suppose; and at Paris the

place where you enjoy _le veritable vernis St. Martin_ in perfection,

the people can scarcely be termed _polished_, or even _varnished_: they

are _glazed_; and everything slides off the _exterieur_ 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

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 every walk 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

to _me_. 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 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 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 planted one 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 terraces _within_ the island, and a prospect of

unequalled 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 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 has himself the right of raising

men upon the main land, and of coining money at _Macau_, 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 London by 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: _he_ lives 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 or petticoats 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 of _worshipping 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 this _Varesotto_ are very charmingly varied with

mountains, lakes, and cultivated life; the only fault in our prospect is

the want of water. Had I told my companions of yesterday perhaps, that

the view from _Madonna del Monte_ reminded 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 attendant _Art_.

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 would afford 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 gay _villegiatura_ here in

this charming country, where the snowy cap of the _gros_ St. 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 its _glacieres_: 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 poignant

flavour that Summer can bestow; nor is shade wanting from the walnut

and large chesnut trees, under which we often dine, and sing, and play

at _tarocco_, and hear the horns and clarinets, while sipping our ice

or swallowing our lemonade. The _cicala_ now 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 the

_lucciola_ has 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 of _hyale_. 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 make _improviso_ rhymes, 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 they _do_ mix

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 like _her_, for they 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,--“_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, are oddly 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 is _feudo 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 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 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 were _Christians_,

and the other half _Protestants_; 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

Content, the bane of industry,

soon leads 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 disposed to loiter under

their mistress’s window with a guitar, or rove about the streets at night

with a pretty girl under their arm, singing as they go, or squeaking

with a droll accent, if it is the time for masquerades. Fraud, 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; nor rejoice, like old Moneytrap or Sir Giles

Overreach, in their successful sins: but rather say with Racine’s hero,

translated by Philips, that

Pyrrhus will ne’er approve his own injustice,

Or form excuses while his heart condemns him.

They beat their bosoms at the feet 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 is 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.

But a natural curiosity seen at Milan this 16th day of August 1786, leads

my mind into another channel. I went to wait upon and thank the lady, or

the relations of the lady, who lent us her house at Varese, and make our

proper acknowledgments; and at that visit saw something very uncommon

surely: though I remember Doctor Johnson once said, that nobody had ever

seen a very strange thing; and challenged the company (about seventeen

people, myself among them) to produce a strange thing;--but I had not

then seen Avvocato B----, a lawyer here at Milan, and a man respected

in his profession, who actually chews the cud like an ox; which he did

at my request, and in my presence: he is apparently much like another

tall stout man, but has many extraordinary properties, being eminent for

strength, and possessing a set of ribs and sternum very surprising,

and worthy the attention of anatomists: his body, upon the slightest

touch, even through all his clothes, throws out electric sparks; he

can reject his meals from his stomach at pleasure, and did absolutely

in the course of two hours, the only two I ever passed in his company,

go through, to oblige me, the whole operation of eating, masticating,

swallowing, and returning by the mouth, a large piece of bread and a

peach. With all this conviction, nothing more was wanting; but I obtained

beside, the confirmation of common friends, who were willing likewise to

bear testimony of this strange accidental variety. What I hear of his

character is, that he is a low-spirited, nervous man; and I suppose his

_ruminating_ moments are spent in lamenting the singularities of his

frame:--be this how it will, we have now no time to think any more of

them, as we are packing up for a trip to Bergamo, a city I have not yet

seen.