But any reply serves any common Italian, who is little disposed to investigate matters; and if you tease him with too much ratiocination, is apt to cry out, “Cosa serve sosistieare cosi? ci fara andare tutti matti[V].”  They have indeed so many external amusements in the mere face of the country, that one is better inclined to pardon them, than one would be to forgive inhabitants of less happy climates, should they suffer their intellectual powers to pine for want of exercise, not food:  for here is enough to think upon, God knows, were they disposed so to employ their time; where one may justly affirm that,

[Footnote V:  What signifies all this minuteness of inquiry?—­it will drive us mad.]

    On every thorn delightful wisdom grows,
    And in each rill, some sweet instruction flows;
    But some untaught o’erhear the murmuring rill,
    In spite of sacred leisure—­blockheads still.

The road from Padua hither is not a good one; but so adorned, one cares not much whether it is good or no:  so sweetly are the mulberry-trees planted on each side, with vines richly festooning up and down them, as if for the decoration of a dance at the opera.  One really expects the flower-girls with baskets, or garlands, and scarcely can persuade one’s self that all is real.

Never sure was any thing more rejoicing to the heart, than this lovely season in this lovely country.  The city of Ferrara too is a fine one; Ferrara la civile, the Italians call it, but it seems rather to merit the epithet solenne; so stately are its buildings, so wide and uniform its streets.  My pen was just upon the point of praising its cleanliness too, till I reflected there was nobody to dirty it.  I looked half an hour before I could find one beggar, a bad account of poor Ferrara; but it brought to my mind how unreasonably my daughter and myself had laughed seven years ago, at reading in an extract from some of the foreign gazettes, how the famous Improvisatore Talassi, who was in England about the year 1770, and entertained with his justly-admired talents the literati at London; had published an account of his visit to Mr. Thrale, at a villa eight miles from Westminster-bridge, during that time, when he had the good fortune, he said, to meet many celebrated characters at his country-seat; and the mortification which nearly overbalanced it, to miss seeing the immortal Garrick then confined by illness.  In all this, however, there was nothing ridiculous; but we fancied his description of Streatham village truly so; when we read that he called it Luogo assai popolato ed ameno[Footnote:  A populous and delightful place.], an expression apparently pompous, and inadequate to the subject:  but the jest disappeared when I got into his town; a place which perhaps may be said to possess every other excellence but that of being popolato ed ameno; and I sincerely believe that no Ferrara-man could have missed making