Christ himself declared to be the greatest man ever born of a woman.

The old Romans had an institution in this month of games to Neptune
Equester, as they called their Sea God, with no great appearance of good
sense neither; but the horse he produced at the naming of Athens was the
cause assigned--these games are perhaps half transmitted ones from those
in the ancient mythology.

The evening concluded, and the night began with fire-works; the church,
or duomo, as a cathedral is always called in Italy, was illuminated on
the outside, and very beautiful, and very very magnificent was the
appearance. The reflection of the cupola's lights in the river gave us
back a faint image of what we had been admiring; and when I looked at
them from my window, as we were retiring to rest; such, thought I, and
fainter still are the images which can be given of a show in written or
verbal description; yet my English friends shall not want an account of
what I have seen; for Italy, at last, is only a fine well-known academy
figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings according as the
light falls; and our seat affords opportunity. Every man sees that, and
indeed most things, with the eyes of his then present humour, and begins
describing away so as to convey a dignified or despicable idea of the
object in question, just as his disposition led him to interpret its
appearance.

Readers now are grown wiser, however, than very much to mind us: they
want no further telling that one traveller was in pain, and one in love
when the tour of Italy was made by them; and so they pick out their
intelligence accordingly, from various books, written like two letters
in the Tatler, giving an account of a rejoicing night; one endeavouring
to excite majestic ideas, the other ludicrous ones of the very same
thing.

Well 'tis true enough, however, and has been often enough laughed at,
that the Italian horses run without riders, and scamper down a long
street with untrimmed heels, hundreds of people hooking them along, as
naughty boys do a poor dog, that has a bone tied to his tail in England.
This diversion was too good to end with the day.

Dulness, dear Queen, repeats the jest again.

We had another, and another just such a race for three or four evenings
together, and they got an English _cock-tailed nag_, and set _him_ to
the business, as they said _he was trained to it_; but I don't recollect
his making a more brilliant figure than his p