countenance at once soft and animated, agreeably tinged with melancholy, yet lit up by the incessant play of thought and emotion that succeed each other in her talk.  Better conversation I never heard; and can heartily confirm the assurances of those who had told me that the lady was as agreeable in discourse as learned in the closet. (Footnote:  It has before now been observed that the free and volatile manners of foreign ladies tend to blind the English traveller to the inferiority of their physical charms.  Note by a Female Friend of the Author.)

On entering, found a numerous company assembled to compliment my hostess on her recent appointment as doctor of the University.  This is an honour not uncommonly conferred in Italy, where female learning, perhaps from its rarity, is highly esteemed; but I am told the ladies thus distinguished seldom speak in public, though their degree entitles them to a chair in the University.  In the Signorina V.’s society I found the most advanced reformers of the duchy:  among others Signor Gamba, the famous pamphleteer, author of a remarkable treatise on taxation, which had nearly cost him his liberty under the late Duke’s reign.  He is a man of extreme views and sarcastic tongue, with an irritability of manner that is perhaps the result of bodily infirmities.  His ideas, I am told, have much weight with the fair doctoress; and in the lampoons of the day the new constitution is said to be the offspring of their amours, and to have inherited its father’s deformity.

The company presently withdrawing, my hostess pressed me to remain.  She was eager for news from France, spoke admiringly of the new constitution, and recited in a moving manner an Ode of her own composition on the Fall of the Bastille.  Though living so retired she makes no secret of her connection with the Duke; said he had told her of his conversation with me, and asked what I thought of his plan for draining the marsh of Pontesordo.  On my attempting to reply to this in detail, I saw that, like some of the most accomplished of her sex, she was impatient of minutiae, and preferred general ideas to particular instances; but when the talk turned on the rights of the people I was struck by the energy and justice of her remarks, and by a tone of resolution and courage that made me to say to myself:  “Here is the hand that rules the state.”

She questioned me earnestly about the state of affairs in France, begged me to lend her what pamphlets I could procure, and while making no secret of her republican sympathies, expressed herself with a moderation not always found in her sex.  Of the clergy alone she appeared intolerant:  a fact hardly to be wondered at, considering the persecution to which she and her father have been subjected.  She detained me near two hours in such discourse, and on my taking leave asked with some show of feeling what I, as a practical economist, would advise the Duke to do for the benefit of his people; to which I replied, “Plant turnips, madam!” and she laughed heartily, and said no doubt I was right.  But I fear all the heads here are too full of fine theories to condescend to such simple improvements...