h devices: while one would yawn, and one would whisper, a
third would walk gravely out of the room, and say to his friend upon the
stairs, "Why sure we had better read our old poets at home, than be
called together, like fools, to hear what comes uppermost in
such-a-one's head, about his _Daphne_! In good time! Why I have been
tired of _Daphne_ since I was fourteen years old." But the best jest of
all would be, to see an ordinary fellow, a strolling player for example,
set seriously to make or repeat verses in our streets or squares
concerning his sweetheart's _cruelty_; when he would be in more danger
from that of the mob and the magistrates; who, if the first did not
throw dirt at him, and drive him home quickly, would come themselves,
and examine into his sanity, and if they found him not _statutably mad_,
commit him for a vagrant.

Different amusements, like different sorts of food, suit different
countries; and this is among the efforts of those who have learned to
refine their _pleasures_ without so refining their _ideas_ as to be able
no longer to hit on any pleasure subtle enough to escape their own power
of ridiculing it.

This city of Ferrara has produced some curious and opposite characters
in times past, however empty it may now be thought: one painter too, and
one singer, both super-eminent in their professions, have dropped their
own names, and are best known to fame by that of _Il_ and _La
Ferrarese_. Nor can I leave it without some reflections on the
extraordinary life of Renee de France, daughter of Louis XII surnamed
the Just, and Anne de Bretagne, his first wife. This lady having married
the famous Hercules D'Este, one of the handsomest men in Europe, lived
with him here in much apparent felicity as Duchess of Ferrara; but took
such an aversion to the church and court of Rome, from the superstitions
she saw practised in Italy, that though she resolved to dissemble her
opinions during the life of her husband, whom she wished not to disgust,
at the instant of his death she quitted all her dignities; and retiring
to France, was protected by her father in the open profession of
Calvinism, living a life of privacy and purity among the Huguenots in
the southern provinces. This _Louis le Juste_ was he who gave the French
what little pretensions they have ever obtained on which to fix the
foundations of future liberty: he first established a parliament at
Rouen, another at Aix; but while thus gentle to his s