reets, and get a good deal of money from those who stop to listen to
them. It must be very pleasant, on a cool summer evening, to sit under
some magnificent old portico, listening to some interesting poem, or
hearing a pretty story related.

Throughout Italy, one of the remarkable customs, is keeping of a grand
festival, which begins some weeks before Lent, and is called the
"Carnival;" on this occasion, every place is brilliantly adorned, and
the people go about singing, dancing, joking, and masquerading. The
most splendid Carnival is kept at Venice, a remarkable city of Italy,
built upon a several islands, the sea, which runs every where among
them, serving the inhabitants for streets.

The Italians are very handsome, and have jet black hair, dark roguish
eyes, and fine figures. The dress of the lower orders is even prettier
than the pretty Spanish costume. The men wear high-crowned hats, such
as you may sometimes have seen on the organ-grinders in the streets of
London, velveteen jackets, gaiters, and open shirt-collars, loosely
fastened by a silk ribbon; while the women have short scarlet
petticoats, and jackets of a darker colour, with exceedingly short
sleeves, tied with bright ribbon, and their long black hair decorated
with coloured bows of ribbon, and confined by a silk lace net, which
falls partly over their shoulders. Instead of sending thieves to
prison in Italy, they are sent on board the galleys, a large kind of
rowing vessels, where they are chained to the decks, and obliged to
endure every species of hardship.

What a number of things the Germans have contributed! Bracelets,
articles of straw, beautiful household furniture, toys, wire, and many
other manufactures. Here is a splendid tray of polished amber, with a
little carriage, made according to a proper model, and a large
chandelier of amber, capable of holding several thousand lights. There
is a beautiful cabinet made of a collection of pieces of unpolished
amber, intended to show the different kinds of that mineral, its
various forms, its peculiarities, and its varieties. Here is a
bedstead, worth it is said ten thousand pounds; and the most elegant
furniture ever seen. And here is a piece of white silk embroidered
with portraits of our Queen and the Prince of Wales, done in a thin
kind of thread, called "hair thread."

You know a good deal about Germany itself, I dare say, already; but I
must tell you something about the Germans themselves. The