of its peaceful
inhabitants; where one robbery alone has been committed for sixteen
years; and the thief hanged by a Florentine executioner borrowed for the
purpose, no Lucchese being able or willing to undertake so horrible an
office, with terrifying circumstances of penitence and public
reprehension: where the governed are so few in proportion to the
governors; all power being circulated among four hundred and fifty
nobles, and the whole country producing scarcely ninety thousand souls.
A great boarding-school in England is really an infinitely more
licentious place; and grosser immoralities are every day connived at in
it, than are known to pollute this delicate and curious commonwealth;
which keeps a council always subsisting, called the _Discoli_, to
examine the lives and conduct, professions, and even _health_ of their
subjects: and once o'year they sweep the town of vagabonds, which till
then are caught up and detained in a house of correction, and made to
work, if hot disabled by lameness, till the hour of their release and
dismission. I wondered there were so few beggars about, but the reason
is now apparent: these we see are neighbours, come hither only for the
three days gala.

I was wonderfully solicitous to obtain some of their coin, which carries
on it the image of no _earthly_ prince; but his head only who came to
redeem us from general slavery on the one side, _Jesus Christ_; on the
other, the word _Libertas_.

Our peasant-girls here are in a new dress to me; no more jewels to be
seen, no more pearls; the finery of which so dazzled me in Tuscany:
these wenches are prohibited such ornaments it seems. A muslin
handkerchief, folded in a most becoming manner, and starched exactly
enough to make it wear clean four days, is the head-dress of Lucchese
lasses; it is put on turban-wise, and they button their gowns close,
with long sleeves _a la Savoyarde_; but it is made often of a stiff
brocaded silk, and green lapels, with cuffs of the same colour; nor do
they wear any hats at all, to defend them from a sun which does
undoubtedly mature the fig and ripen the vine, but which, by the same
excess of power, exalts the venom of the viper, and gives the scorpion
means to keep me in perpetual torture for fear of his poison, of which,
though they assure us death is seldom the consequence among _them_, I
know his sting would finish me at once, because the gnats at Florence
were sufficient to lame me for a considerabl