Nothing can be prettier, however, than the slow and tranquil manners of a Florentine; nothing more polished than his general address and behaviour:  ever in the third person, though to a blackguard in the street, if he has not the honour of his particular acquaintance, while intimacy produces voi in those of the highest rank, who call one another Carlo and Angelo very sweetly; the ladies taking up the same notion, and saying Louisa, or Maddalena, without any addition at all.

The Don and Donna of Milan were offensive to me somehow, as they conveyed an idea of Spain, not Italy.  Here Signora is the term, which better pleases one’s ear, and Signora Contessa, Signora Principessa, if the person is of higher quality, resembles our manners more when we say my Lady Dutchess, &c.  What strikes me as most observable, is the uniformity of style in all the great towns.

At Venice the men of literature and fashion speak with the same accent, and I believe the same quick turns of expression as their Gondolier; and the coachman at Milan talks no broader than the Countess; who, if she does not speak always in French to a foreigner, as she would willingly do, tries in vain to talk Italian; and having asked you thus, alla capi? which means ha ella capita? laughs at herself for trying to toscaneggiare, as she calls it, and gives the point up with no cor altr. that comes in at the end of every sentence, and means non occorre altro; there is no more occurs upon the subject.

The Laquais de Place who attended us at Bologna was one of the few persons I had met then, who spoke a language perfectly intelligible to me.  “Are you a Florentine, pray friend, said I?” “No, madam, but the combinations of this world having led me to talk much with strangers, I contrive to tuscanize it all I can for their advantage, and doubt not but it will tend to my own at last.”

Such a sentiment, so expressed by a footman, would set a plain man in London a laughing, and make a fanciful Lady imagine he was a nobleman disguised.  Here nobody laughs, nor nobody stares, nor wonders that their valet speaks just as good language, or utters as well-turned sentences as themselves.  Their cold answer to my amazement is as comical as the fellow’s fine style—­e battizzato[Footnote:  He has been baptized.], say they, come noi altri[Footnote:  As well as we.].  But we are called away to hear the fair Fantastici, a young woman who makes improviso verses, and sings them, as they tell me, with infinite learning and taste.  She is successor to the celebrated Corilla, who no longer exhibits the power she once held without a rival:  yet to her conversations every one still strives for admittance, though she is now ill, and old, and hoarse with repeated colds.  She spares, however, now by no labour or fatigue to obtain and keep that superiority and admiration which one day perhaps gave her almost equal trouble to receive