But we are hastening forward as fast as our broken carriage will permit, to Padua, where we shall leave it: thither to arrive, we pass through Senegallia, built by the Gauls, and still retaining the Gaulish name, but now little remarkable. What struck me most was my own crossing the Rubicon in my way back to England, and our comfortable return to
BOLOGNA,
After admiring the high forehead and innocent simper of Baroccio’s beauties at Pesaro, where the best European silk now comes from; against which the produce of Rimini vainly endeavours to vie. That town was once an Umbrian colony I think, and there is a fine memorial there where Diocletianus reposuit, resolving perhaps to end where Julius Cæsar had begun; he died at Salo however in Dalmatia,
Quâ maris Adriaci longas ferit unda Salones.
Ravenna l’Antica tired more than it pleased us; Fano is a populous pretty little town; but I know no reason why it was originally dedicated to Fortune. Truth is, we are weary of these sacred fanes, and long to see once more our amiable friends at Venice and at Milan.
I have missed San Marino at last, but receive kind assurances every day that the loss is small; being now little more than a convent seated on a hill, which affords refuge for robbers; and that the present Pope meditates its destruction as a nuisance to the neighbouring towns. There never was any coin struck there it seems; I thought there had: but the train of reflections excited by even a distant view of it are curious enough as opposed to its protectress Rome; which, founded by robbers and banditti, ends in being the seat of sanctity and priestly government; while San Marino, begun by a hermit, and secluded from all other states for the mere purposes of purer devotion, finishes by its necessary removal as a repository for assassins, and a refuge for those who break the laws with violence.
Such is this variable and capricious world! and so dies away my desire to examine this political curiosity; the extinction of which I am half sorry for. Privation is still a melancholy idea, and were one to hear that the race of wasps were extirpated, it would grieve one.
Bologna affords one time for every meditation. No inn upon the Bath road is more elegant than the Pellegrino; and we regretted our broken equipage the less as it drew us slowly through so sweet a country. The medlar blossoms adorn the hedges with their blanche roses; the hawthorn bushes, later here than with us, perfume them; and the roads, little travelled, do not torment one with the dust as in England, where it not only offends the traveller, but takes away some beauty from the country, by giving a brown or whitish look to the shrubs and trees. We shall repose here very comfortably, or at least change our mode of being busy, which refreshes one perhaps more than positive idleness. “But life,” says some writer, “is a continual fever;” and sure ours has been completely so for these two years. A charming lady of our country, for whom I have the highest esteem, protests she shall be happy to get back to London if it is only for the relief of sitting still, and resolving to see no more sights: exchanging fasto, fiera, and frittura, for a muffin, a mop, and a morning newspaper: three things equally unknown in Italy, as the other three among us.
With regard to pictures however, l’Appetit vient en mangeant[30], as I experienced completely when traversing the Zampieri palace with eagerness that increased at every step. I once more half-worshipped the works of divine Guercino. Nothing shall prevent my going to his birth-place at Cento, whether in our way or out of it.