Italians liked him—­others called his performance ‘seccatura’ (a devilish good word, by the way)—­and all Milan was in controversy about him.

“The state of morals in these parts is in some sort lax.  A mother and son were pointed out at the theatre, as being pronounced by the Milanese world to be of the Theban dynasty—­but this was all.  The narrator (one of the first men in Milan) seemed to be not sufficiently scandalised by the taste or the tie.  All society in Milan is carried on at the opera:  they have private boxes, where they play at cards, or talk, or any thing else; but (except at the Cassino) there are no open houses, or balls, &c. &c.

“The peasant girls have all very fine dark eyes, and many of them are beautiful.  There are also two dead bodies in fine preservation—­one Saint Carlo Boromeo, at Milan; the other not a saint, but a chief, named Visconti, at Monza—­both of which appeared very agreeable.  In one of the Boromean isles (the Isola bella), there is a large laurel—­the largest known—­on which Buonaparte, staying there just before the battle of Marengo, carved with his knife the word ‘Battaglia.’  I saw the letters, now half worn out and partly erased.

“Excuse this tedious letter.  To be tiresome is the privilege of old age and absence:  I avail myself of the latter, and the former I have anticipated.  If I do not speak to you of my own affairs, it is not from want of confidence, but to spare you and myself.  My day is over—­what then?—­I have had it.  To be sure, I have shortened it; and if I had done as much by this letter, it would have been as well.  But you will forgive that, if not the other faults of

     “Yours ever and most affectionately,

     “B.

     “P.S.  November 7. 1816.

“I have been over Verona.  The amphitheatre is wonderful—­beats even Greece.  Of the truth of Juliet’s story they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact—­giving a date (1303), and showing a tomb.  It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves.  The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love.  I have brought away a few pieces of the granite, to give to my daughter and my nieces.  Of the other marvels of this city, paintings, antiquities, &c., excepting the tombs of the Scaliger princes, I have no pretensions to judge.  The gothic monuments of the Scaligers pleased me, but ‘a poor virtuoso am I,’ and ever yours.”

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