et, whence he seldom rose early enough to see the sun do more
than glisten on the opposing windows of the street: but genius, like
truth, cannot be kept down. So he wrote, and so they painted! _Ut
pictura poesis_.

The music is not in a state so capital as we left it in the north of
Italy; we regret Nardini of Florence, Alessandri of Venice, and Ronzi of
Milan; and who that has heard Signior Marchesi sing, could ever hear a
successor (for rival he has none), without feeling total indifference to
all their best endeavours?

The conversations of Cardinal de Bernis and Madame de Boccapaduli are
what my countrywomen talk most of; but the Roman ladies cannot endure
perfumes, and faint away even at an artificial rose. I went but once
among them, when Memmo the Venetian ambassador did me the honour to
introduce me _somewhere_, but the conversation was soon over, not so my
shame; when I perceived all the company shrink from me very oddly, and
stop their noses with rue, which a servant brought to their assistance
on open salvers. I was by this time more like to faint away than
they--from confusion and distress; my kind protector informed me of the
cause; said I had some grains of marechale powder in my hair perhaps,
and led me out of the assembly; to which no intreaties could prevail on
me ever to return, or make further attempts to associate with a delicacy
so very susceptible of offence.

Mean time the weather is exceedingly bad, heavy, thick, and foggy as our
own, for aught I see; but so it was at Milan too I well remember: one's
eye would not reach many mornings across the Naviglio that ran directly
under our windows. For fine bright Novembers we must go to
Constantinople I fancy; certain it is that Rome will not supply them.

What however can make these Roman ladies fly from _odori_ so, that a
drop of lavenderwater in one's handkerchief, or a carnation in one's
stomacher, is to throw them all into, convulsions thus? Sure this is the
only instance in which they forbear to _fabbricare fu
l'antico_[Footnote: Build upon the old foundations.], in their own
phrase: the dames, of whom Juvenal delights to tell, liked perfumes well
enough if I remember; and Horace and Martial cry "_Carpe rosas_"
perpetually. Are the modern inhabitants still more refined than _they_
in their researches after pleasure? and are the present race of ladies
capable of increasing, beyond that of their ancestors, the keenness of
any corporeal sense? I s