from
business, stored with a perfect knowledge of mankind so far as his
experience could inform him, told me once, that whoever died before
sixty years old, if he had made his own fortune, was likely to leave it
according as friendship, gratitude, and public spirit dictated: either
to those who had served, or those who had pleased him; or, not
unfrequently, to benefit some charity, set up some school, or the like:
"but let a man once turn sixty," said he, "and his natural heirs _are
sure of him_:" for having seen many people, he has likewise been
disgusted by many; and though he does not love his relations better than
he did, the discovery that others are but little superior to them in
those excellencies he has sought about the world in vain for, he begins
to enquire for his nephew's little boy, whom as he never saw, never
could have offended him; and if he does not break the chain of a
favourite watch, or any other such boyish trick, the estate is his for
ever, upon no principle but this in the testator.

So it is by those who travel a good deal; by what I have seen, every
country has so much in it to be justly complained of, that most men
finish by preferring their own.

That neither complaints nor rejoicings here at Milan, however, proceed
from affectation, is a choice comfort: the Lombards possess the skill to
please you without feigning; and so artless are their manners, you
cannot even suspect them of insincerity. They have, perhaps for that
very reason, few comedies, and fewer novels among them: for the worst of
every man's character is already well known to the rest; but be his
conduct what it will, the heart is commonly right enough--_il luon cuor
Lombardo_ is famed throughout all Italy, and nothing can become
proverbial without an excellent reason. Little opportunity is therefore
given to writers who carry the dark lanthorn of life into its deepest
recesses--unwind the hidden wickedness of a Maskwell or a Monkton,
develope the folds of vice, and spy out the internal worthlessness of
apparent virtue; which from these discerning eyes cannot be cloked even
by that early-taught affectation which renders it a real ingenuity to
discover, if in a highly polished capital a man or woman has or has not
good parts or principles--so completely are the first overlaid with
literature, and the last perverted by refinement.

* * * * *

April 2, 1785.

The cold weather continues still, and