The following sonnet, addressed to the new Magistrate, by the elegant and learned
Abbé Bettolini, will entertain such of my readers as understand Italian:
No, Brenne, il popol tuo non è spietato,
Colpa non è di clima, o fuol nemico:
Ma gli inulti delitti, e'l vezzo antico
D'impune andar coi ferro e fuoco a lato,
Ira noi finor nudriro un branco irato
D'Orsi e di lupi, il malaccorto amico
Ti svenava un fellon sgherro mendico,
E per cauto timor n'era onorato.
Al primiero spuntar d'un fausto lume
Tutto cangiò: curvansi in falci i teh,
Mille Pluto perdè vittime usate.
Viva l'Eroe, il comun padre, il nume
Gridan le gentè a si bei dì ferbate.
E sia ché ardisca dir che siam crudelé.
Imitation.
No, Brennus, no longer thy sons shall retain
Of their founder ferocious, th'original stain;
It cannot be natural cruelty sure,
The reproaches for which from all men we endure;
Nor climate nor soil shall henceforth bear the blame,
'Tis custom alone, and that custom our shame:
While arm'd at all points men were suffer'd to rove,
And brandish the steel in defence of their love;
What wonder that conduct or caution should fail,
And horrid Lycanthropy's terrors prevail?
Now justice resumes her insignia, we find
New light breaking in on each nebulous mind;
While commission'd from Heaven, a parent, a friend
Sees our swords at his nod into reaping-hooks bend,
And souls snatch'd from death round the hero attend.
From these verses, written by a native of Brescia, one may see how matters stood there very, very little while ago: but here at Venice the people are of a particularly sweet and gentle disposition, good-humoured with each other, and kind to strangers; little disposed to public affrays (which would indeed be punished and put a sudden end to in an instant), nor yet to any secret or hidden treachery. They watch the hour of a Regatta with impatience, to make some merit with the woman of their choice, and boast of their families who have won in the manly contest forty or fifty years ago, perhaps when honoured with the badge and livery of some noble house; for here almost every thing is hereditary, as in England almost every thing is elective; nor had I an idea how much state affairs influence the private life of individuals in a country, till I left trusting to books, and looked a little about me. The