more the speech of a good
workman, than of a man whose mind was exalted by his profession. The
gates are of brass, divided into ninety-six compartments each, and
carved with such variety of invention, such elaboration of art and
ingenuity, that no praise except that which he gave them could have been
too high. The font has not been used since the days when immersion in
baptism was deemed necessary to salvation; a ceremony still considered
by the Greek church as indispensable. Why the disputes concerning _this_
sacrament were carried on with more decency and less lasting rancour
among Christians, than those which related to the other great pledge of
our pardon, the communicating with our Saviour Christ in his last
Supper, I know not, nor can imagine. Every page of ecclesiastical
history exhibits the tenaciousness with which the smallest attendant
circumstance on this last-mentioned sacrament has been held fast by the
Romanists, who dropped the immersion at baptism of themselves; and in so
warm a climate too! it moves my wonder; when nothing is more obvious to
the meanest understanding, than that if the first sacrament is not
rightly and duly administered, we never shall arrive at receiving the
other at all. I hope it is impossible for any one less than myself to
wish the continuance or revival of contentions so disgraceful to
humanity in general; so peculiarly repugnant to the true spirit of
Christianity, which consists chiefly in charity, and that brotherly love
we know to have been cemented by the blood of our blessed Lord: yet very
strange it is to think, that while other innovations have been resisted
even to death, scarcely any among the many sects we have divided into,
retain the original form in that ceremony so emphatically called
_christening_.

These observations suggested by the sight of the old font at Florence
shall now be succeeded by lighter subjects of reflection; among which
the first that presents itself is the superior elegance of the language;
for till we arrive _here_, all is dialect; though by this word I would
not have any one mistake me, or understand it as meant in the limited
sense of a provincial jargon, such as Yorkshire, Derbyshire, or
Cornwall, present us with; where every sound is corruption, barbarism,
and vulgarity.

The States of Italy being all under different rulers, are kept separate
from each other, and speak a different dialect; that of Milan full of
consonants and harsh to the e