The collection of Capo di Monte has undergone various changes in the disposition of the pictures. The Queen sent to desire I would visit her at Caserta, but she told me the measles was in the palace among her children. I therefore declined the honour, on account of exposing Webby to the danger. I dined at Caserta with the Hamiltons. I found Mullady altered, and Sir William seemed more occupied about his own digestion than in admiring the graceful turn of her head. I returned day and night from Naples to Albano, where I found Ld. Holland and Mr. M. waiting for me. The next morning I went to see the lake and the emissary. The emissary is an issue from the lake to carry off the superabundant waters. It is perforated through the hill. In the evening we drove through the villas at Frascati, and returned to Rome.

I quitted Rome, and went back to Florence by the Siena road. Nothing very remarkable occurred during my short stay at Florence. I set off from thence on April ye 11th. I bid adieu to that lovely spot, where I enjoyed a degree of happiness for a whole year that was too exquisite to be permanent. Ld. Holland drove me in his phæton the first post to Prato: he returned, and I pursued my journey upon the Modena road.

For some reason, unrelated in the text, Lady Webster seems to have changed her route. On reaching Bologna, instead of turning west to Modena, she took the road to Ferrara, which she reached on April 18th.

RELICS OF ARIOSTO

Ferrara is but the skeleton of its former grandeur; it is now deserted and thinly inhabited. The tomb of Ariosto naturally attracted my veneration; it is in the Benedictine convent. The architecture of it is bad, and the bust but moderately executed; it represents him very much in the decline of life. His house, in which his grotto, chair, and inkstand used to be shown, is now pulled down and destroyed by the rapacity of the owner. The public library is small, and contains no books of value. There they preserve the original manuscript of most of the books of the Orlando, chair, and inkstand. The manuscript is written by himself, and in the margin there are numberless emendations; thus we discover that those verses that seem so easy and to flow without exertion, are precisely those that have undergone the most alteration. At the bottom of one of the pages I perceived written in pencil:—

Vittorio Alfieri vede e vennerò.
18 Giugno, 1783.

He might venerate, but the harmony he can never imitate.

Early on ye 19th I set off and crossed the Po at Lagoscuro, and from thence got to Rovigo, a dreadful road and two bad barques, one over the canal Bianco, and the other across the Adigio. Rovigo, the birthplace of Manfredini, a wretched, straggling town. We reached Padua at night. I have been there before, but I possess a very faint remembrance of the place. I have just heard that the unhappy phantom of royalty, Louis XVIII., has been compelled to quit the Venetian territory. I remained at Padua several days. Miss Bowdler and Lady Herries lodged in the same hotel. Ld. Holland overtook me from Florence.

We went to the monastery of Praia, a rich Benedictine order. The heat of the weather and badness of the road had fatigued us, and we asked permission to enter the sacristy and refresh ourselves. The lay brother, who is the porter, repulsed us with harshness, and refused us admission within the walls, adding that water was the only hospitality afforded by the monks. On my return to Padua I wrote a letter of complaint to the Abbot, who answered it with civility, and promised to reprimand the insolence of the porter.

I went the next evening to see the Villa Quirini, remarkable for possessing some of the oldest Egyptian monuments in Europe if not coeval with the Pyramids at least so Dancarville, the learned antiquary, assured me. He pretends to be so much au fait of them, that he even shows a mark made by a soldier of the army of Cambyses; but the reveries of antiquaries are absurd. The French have broken into the plain of Piémont by way of Nice, and have gained a great victory over the Austrians. Buonaparti [sic] is the French commander.