[Footnote O: How goes the profession?]
[Footnote P: Why since the _quality_ has taken to it ma'am, it brings
_us_ in very little indeed.]
Will Naples, the original seat of Ulysses's seducers, shew us any thing
stronger than this? I hardly expect or wish it. The state of music in
Italy, if one may believe those who ought to know it best, is not what
it was. The _manner of singing_ is much changed, I am told; and some
affectations have been suffered to encroach upon their natural graces.
Among the persons who exhibited their talents at the Countess of
Rosenberg's last week, our country-woman's performance was most
applauded; but when I name Lady Clarges, no one will wonder.
It is said that painting is now but little cultivated among them; Rome
will however be the place for such enquiries. Angelica Kauffman being
settled there, seems a proof of their taste for living merit; and if one
thing more than another evinces Italian candour and true good-nature, it
is perhaps their generous willingness to be ever happy in acknowledging
foreign excellence, and their delight in bringing forward the eminent
qualities of every other nation; never insolently vaunting or bragging
of their own. Unlike to this is the national spirit and confined ideas
of perfection inherent in a Gallic mind, whose sole politeness is an
_appliquè_ stuck _upon_ the coat, but never _embroidered into it_.
The observation made here last night by a Parisian lady, gave me a
proof of this I little wanted. We met at the Casino of the Senator
Angelo Quirini, where a sort of literary coterïe assemble every evening,
and form a society so instructive and amusing, so sure to be filled with
the first company in Venice, and so hospitably open to all travellers of
character, that nothing can _now_ be to me a higher intellectual
gratification than my admittance among them; as _in future_ no place
will ever be recollected with more pleasure, no hours with more
gratitude, than those passed most delightfully by me in that most
agreeable apartment.
I expressed to the French lady my admiration of St. Mark's Place.
"_C'est que vous n'avez jamais vue la foire St. Ovide_," said she; "_je
vous assure que cela surpasse beaucoup ces trifles palais qu'on
vantetant_[Q]." And _this could_ only have been arrogance, for she was a
very sensible and a very accomplished woman; and when talked to about
the literary merits of her own countrymen, spoke with great acuteness
and judgment.