isions, our
four elements, leaving the central fire for the yolk. I therefore
regarded our pantomime here at Padua with a degree of reverence I should
have found difficult to excite in myself at Sadler's Wells; where ideas
of antiquity would have been little likely to cross my fancy. Sure I am,
however, that the original inventor of this old pantomime had his head
very full at the time of some very ancient learning.

Now then I must leave this lovely state of Venice, where if the paupers
in every town of it did not crowd about one, tormenting passengers with
unextinguishable clamour, and surrounding them with sights of horror
unfit to be surveyed by any eyes except those of the surgeon, who should
alleviate their anguish, or at least conceal their truly unspeakable
distresses--one should break one's heart almost at the thoughts of
quitting people who show such tenderness towards their friends, that
less than ocular conviction would scarce persuade me to believe such
wandering misery could remain disregarded among the most amiable and
pleasing people in the world. His excellency Bragadin half promised me
that some steps should be taken at Venice at least, to remove a nuisance
so disgraceful; and said, that when I came again, I should walk about
the town in white sattin slippers, and never see a beggar from one end
of it to the other.

On the twenty-sixth of May then, with the senator Quirini's letters to
Corilla, with the Countess of Starenberg's letters to some Tuscan
friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want
it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this
night under the pope's protection:--may God but grant us his!

FERRERA.

We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent,
considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely
any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting
in one's mind.

I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Sussex, who, at
twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea;
nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:--And well, child!
said I, are not you much surprised?--"It is a fine sight, to be sure,"
replied she coldly, "but,"--but what? you are not disappointed are
you?--"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I
saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what
did you expect to se