te the fame she has gained, when the sweet voice is gone, which once
enchanted all who heard it--like the daughters of Pierius in Ovid.

And though I was exceedingly entertained by the present improvisatrice,
the charming Fantastici, whose youth, beauty, erudition, and fidelity to
her husband, give her every claim upon one's heart, and every just
pretension to applause, I could not, in the midst of that delight, which
classick learning and musical excellence combined to produce, forbear a
grateful recollection of the civilities I had received from Corilla, and
half-regretting that her rival should be so successful;

For tho' the treacherous tapster, Thomas,
Hangs a new angel ten doors from us,
We hold it both a shame and sin
To quit the true old Angel Inn.

Well! if some people have too little appearance of respect for religion,
there are others who offend one by having too much, and so the balance
is kept even.

We were a walking last night in the gardens of Porto St. Gallo, and met
two or three well-looking women of the second rank, with a baby, four or
five years old at most, dressed in the habit of a Dominican Friar,
bestowing the benediction as he walked along like an officiating Priest.
I felt a shock given to all my nerves at once, and asked Cavalier
D'Elci the meaning of so strange a device. His reply to me was, "_E
divozione mal intesa, Signora_[Footnote: 'Tis ill-understood devotion,
madam.];" and turning round to the other gentlemen, "Now this folly,"
said he, "a hundred years ago would have been the object of profound
veneration and prodigious applause. Fifty years hence it would be
censured as hypocritical; it is now passed by wholly unnoticed, except
by this foreign Lady, who, I believe, thought it was done for a joke.

I have had a little fever since I came hither from the intense heat I
trust; but my maid has a worse still. Doctor Bicchierei, with that
liberality which ever is found to attend real learning, prescribed
James's powders to _her_, and bid me attend to Buchan's Domestick
Medicine, and I should do well enough he said.

Mr. Greatheed, Mr. Parsons, Mr. Biddulph, and Mr. Piozzi, have been
together on a party of pleasure to see the renowned Vallombrosa, and
came home contradicting Milton, who says the devils lay bestrewn

Thick as autumnal leaves in Vallombrosa:

Whereas, say they, the trees are all evergreen in those woods. Milton,
it seems, was right notwithstanding: