We set out from Florence last Saturday sevenight and are arrived
here after a journey of about ten days. We came round by Lucca,
Pisa, Leghorn and Sienna, and I think made a very agreable tour of
it. I must acknowledge that I had the least pleasure in what my
companion enjoyed I believe the most; the Opera of Lucca. That little
republick, who could give usefull lessons of gouvernment to many
states much more considerable, lays out a very large sum of money
every autumn in entertaining an exceeding good Opera at the time that
public entertainements are very dead in the other towns of Italy, and
receives their money again with very good interest from the great
affluence of strangers who resort to Lucca upon that occasion. Of the
different tastes which a man may form or indulge in in Italy that
of musick has hitherto been lost upon me, and I have always had the
honesty never to pretend to any taste which I was in reality devoid
of.
We past four days at Leghorn where I saw the Actons. They were so
civil to me that I was much embarassed how to behave. The poor old
Commodore is in a most melancholy situation. Last winter he had a
most violent attack of the Apoplexy; whilst in that situation he was
persuaded either from motives of interest or devotion to change his
religion in which he had been till then very steady. The immediate
consequence of which imprudent step was the total neglect of all his
English friends, who from being very intimate with him have taken
the unanimous resolution of not holding the smallest connection with
him. I most sincerely pity him. At his time of life, to lose the
only friends he had, (for he has never been able even to learn the
language of the country) to be continually regretting England which
he will never see again, and to find himself oppressed with every
misfortune of age and infirmity, is a situation truly melancholy. He
talked to me a great deal of you and of times which I had scarce any
remembrance of, and I think from his manner and conversation that I
never saw a more lively picture of an unhappy man. I thought it right
to acquaint the English at Leghorn of my reasons for not neglecting
him as they did, and they all seemed to approve of my behavior.
I am now, Dear Sir, at Rome. If it was difficult before to give you
or Mrs. Gibbon any account of what I saw, it is impossible here. I
have already found such a fund of entertainement for a mind somewhat
prepared for it by an acquaintance with the Romans, that I am really
almost in a dream. Whatever ideas books may have given us of the
greatness of that people, their accounts of the most flourishing
state of Rome fall infinitely short of the picture of its ruins. I am
convinced there never never existed such a nation, and I hope for the
happiness of mankind there never will again. I was this morning upon
the top of Trajan's pillar. I shall not attempt a description of it.
Only figure to yourself a column 140 feet high of the purest white
marble, composed only of about 30 blocks and wrought into bas-reliefs
with as much taste and delicacy as any chimney piece at Up-park.[82]
The sickness of Naples seems pretty well over. I shall not however
yet venture to it. The concern you and Mrs. Gibbon express in her
last letter, makes it my duty to avoid the appearance as well as the
reality of danger. If I allow about three months to Rome, a month
to Naples, and a fortnight or three weeks to the road, &c., visiting
again some of the most curious things upon my return, I shall have
but few idle moments, and yet shall hardly be able to take my last
leave of Rome before the end of February. About six weeks may do
for Bologna, Verona, &c., and Venice, and towards the middle or end
of April I hope to have finished a tour attended with the greatest
pleasure, and I flatter myself with some improvement. I shall then
be ready, Dear Sir, to obey your orders with regard to the time and
manner of my returning to England. The grand tour of Germany I do not
even think of, as I am sensible of the considerable and unavoidable
expence it would be attended with. The route thro' Bavaria to the
Rhine and Low Countries, or that of the south of France to the same
parts, would have their several advantages and might each employ
about two months. However from the great extent of country I must
pass thro' so rapidly, they would not be without an addition of
expence. Believe me, Dear Sir, that is a consideration I feel so
often and so sensibly; that rather than any thing should disturb the
pleasure of our meeting, I will come down from Venice to Leghorn and
embark for England. Satisfied with the enjoyment of Italy and France,
I will rather reflect upon what I shall have seen than upon what I
shall have lost. I wait, Dear Sir, for your directions. I have asked
for them rather soon, both to unburthen my mind, and because we are
neither of us the most exact Correspondents. I have a hundred more
things to say. I would thank Mrs. Gibbon for the agreable news she
sent me in her last letter of your having entirely got over your late
indisposition, but my paper is out and I can only add that I am and
ever shall be,
Dear Sir,
Most sincerely yours,
E. GIBBON, JUNIOR. _May I add Major?_
[82] Near Stansted in Sussex, purchased in 1746 from the Earl of
Tankerville by Sir Matthew Featherstonhaugh, M.P. for Portsmouth.
[Sidenote: MONEY TROUBLES.]
39.
_To his Father._
Rome, November the 10th, 1764.