superstitious presages of an unlucky year: nor is that
strange, for the season of storms ought surely to be past in a climate
so celebrated for mildness and equanimity. The praises of Italian
weather, though wearisomely frequent among us, seem however much
confined to this island for aught I see; who am often tired with hearing
their complaints of their own sky, now that they are under it: always
too cold or too hot, or a seiroc wind, or a rainy day, or a hard frost,
_che gela fin ai pensieri_[Footnote: Which freezes even one's fancy.];
or something to murmur about, while their only great nuisances pass
unnoticed, the heaps of dirt, and crowds of beggars, who infest the
streets, and poison the pleasures of society. While ladies are eating
ice at a coffee-house door, while decent people are hearing mass at the
altar, while strangers are surveying the beauties of the place--no
peace, no enjoyment can one obtain for the beggars; numerous beyond
credibility, fancy and airy, and odd in their manners; and exhibiting
such various lamenesses and horrible deformities in their figure, that I
can sometimes hardly believe my eyes--but am willing to be told, what is
not very improbable, that many of them come from a great distance to
pass the season of ascension here at Venice. I never indeed saw any
thing so gently endured, which it appeared so little difficult to
remedy; but though I hope it would be hard to find a place where more
alms are asked, or less are given, than in Venice; yet I never saw
refusals so pleasingly softened, as by the manners of the high Italians
towards the low. Ladies in particular are so soft-mouthed, so tender in
replying to those who have their lot cast far below them, that one feels
one's own harsher disposition corrected by their sweetness; and when
they called my maid _sister_, in good time--pressing her hand with
affectionate kindness, it melted me; though I feared from time to time
there must be hypocrisy at bottom of such sugared words, till I caught a
lady of condition yesterday turning to the window, and praying fervently
for the girl's conversion to christianity, all from a tender and pious
emotion of her gentle heart: as notwithstanding their caresses, no man
is more firmly persuaded of a mathematical truth than they are of mine,
and my maid's living in a state of certain and eternal reprobation--_ma
fanno veramente vergogna a noi altri_[Footnote: But they really shame
_even us_.], say they, quit