plants: and as the
naturalists tell us all animals may be bred _down_ to a state very
different from that in which they were originally placed; that
_carriers_, and _fantails_, and _croppers_, are produced by early
caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of
which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and
shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer
sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be
produced, and happily bred _down_, the clay-cold coxcomb of St.
James's-street.

In Italy, so far at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire
of appearing what one is _not_: no searching for talk, and torturing
expression to vary its phrases with something new and something fine; or
else sinking into silence from despair of diverting the company, and
taking up the opposite method, contriving to impress them with an idea
of bright intelligence, concealed by modest doubts of our own powers,
and stifled by deep thought upon abstruse and difficult topics. To get
quit of all these deep-laid systems of enjoyment, where

To take our breakfast we project a scheme,
Nor drink our tea without a stratagem,

like the lady in Doctor Young; the surest method is to drop into Italy;
where a conversazione at Venice or Florence, after the society of
London, or _les petit soupers de Paris_, where, in their own phrase, _un
tableau n'attend pas l'autre_[Footnote: One picture don't wait for
another.], is like taking a walk in Ham Gardens, or the Leasowes, after
_les parterres de Versailles ed i Terrazzi di Genoa_. We are affected in
the house, but natural in the gardens. Italians are natural in society,
affected and constrained in the disposition of their grounds. No one,
however, is good or bad, or wise or foolish without a reason why.
Restraint is made for man, and where religious and political liberty is
enjoyed to its full extent, as in Great Britain, the people will forge
shackles for themselves, and lay the yoke heavy on society, to which, on
the contrary, Italians give a loose, as compensation for their want of
freedom in affairs of church or state.

It is, I think, observable of uncontradicted, homebred, and, as we say,
spoiled children, that when a dozen of them get together for the purpose
of passing a day in mutual amusement, they will make to themselves the
strictest laws for their game, and rigidly punish whatever breach of
ru