the other of rue and tansy.

Thus do the inhabitants of every place forfeit or fling away those
pleasures, which the inhabitants of another place think _they_ would use
in a much wiser manner, had Providence bestowed the blessing upon
_them_.

A young Milanese once, whom I met in London, saw me treat a hatter that
lives in Pallmall with the respect due to his merit: when the man was
gone, "Pray, madam," says the Italian, "is this a _gran riccone[Footnote:
Heavy-pursed fellow.]?"_ "He is perhaps," replied I, "worth twenty or
thirty thousand pounds; I do not know what ideas you annex to a _gran
riccone_" "_Oh santissima vergine!_" exclaims the youth, "_s'avessi io mai
settanta mila zecchini! non so pur troppo cosa nesarei; ma questo e
chiaro--non venderei mai cappelli_"--"Oh dear me! had I once seventy
thousand sequins in my pocket, I would--dear--I cannot think myself
_what_ I should do with them all: but this at least is certain, I would
not _sell hats_"

I have been carried to the Laurentian library, where the librarian Bandi
shewed me all possible, and many unmerited civilities; which, for want
of deeper erudition, I could not make the use I wished of. We asked
however to see some famous manuscripts. The Virgil has had a _fac
simile_ made of it, and a printed copy besides; so that it cannot now
escape being known all over Europe. The Bible in Chaldaic characters,
spoken of by Langius as inestimable, and brought hither, with many other
valuable treasures of the same nature, by Lascaris, after the death of
Lorenzo de Medici, who had sent him for the second time to
Constantinople for the purpose of collecting Greek and Oriental books,
but died before his return, is in admirable preservation. The old
geographical maps, made out in a very early age, afforded me much
amusement; and the Latin letters of Petrarch, with the portrait of his
Laura, were interesting to me perhaps more than many other things rated
much higher by the learned, among those rarities which adorn a library
so comprehensive.

Every great nation except ours, which was immersed in barbarism, and
engaged in civil broils, seems to have courted the residence of
Lascaris, but the university of Paris fixed his regard: and though Leo
X. treated with favour, and even friendship, the man whom he had
encouraged to intimacy when Cardinal John of Medicis; though he made him
superintendant of a Greek college at Rome; it is said he always wished
to die in France,