Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. 1 (of 2)

Ladies of distinction bring with them when they marry, besides fortune, as many clothes as will last them seven years; for fashions do not change here as often as at London or P...

Wonderful indeed! yet not at all distracting is the variety of excellence that one contemplates here; such matters! and such scholars! The sweetly playful pencil of Albano, I wo...

Caius Cestius's sepulchre however, without the walls, on the other side, is one of the most perfect remains of antiquity we have here. Aurelian made use of that as a boundary we...

Our apartments here are better than we hoped for, situated most sweetly on the banks of this classical stream; a noble terrace underneath our window, broad as the south parade a...

This city seems really under admirable regulations; here are fewer beggars than even at Florence, where however one for fifty in the states of Genoa or Venice do not meet your e...

The manufacture at the Gobelins seems exceedingly improved; the colouring less inharmonious, the drawing more correct; but our Parisians are not just now thinking about such mat...

In Italy, so far at least as I have gone, there is no impertinent desire of appearing what one is _not_: no searching for talk, and torturing expression to vary its phrases with...

How she came by that extraordinary name though, is not I believe well known; perhaps her likeness to one of the Cape Verd islands, the original Hesperides, might be the cause; f...

I was made to observe at Rome some vestiges of an ancient custom very proper in those days--it was the parading of the streets by a set of people called _Preciæ_, who went some...

Fire is supposed to be the greatest purifier, and Padua has gone through that operation twice completely, being burned the first time by Attila; after which, Narses the famous e...

The States of Italy being all under different rulers, are kept separate from each other, and speak a different dialect; that of Milan full of consonants and harsh to the ear, bu...

Of the longevity of man this district affords us no pleasing examples. The peasants here are apparently unhealthy, and they say--short-lived. We are told by travellers of former...

Zingarelli, the great musical composer, was another occasional member of this charming society: his wit and repartie are famous, and his bons mots are repeated wherever one runs...

The sight of the Bucentoro prepared for Gala, and the glories of Venice upon Ascention-day, must now put an end to other observations. We had the honour and comfort of seeing al...

Such felicity of situation I never saw till now, when one looks upon the painted front of this gay mansion, commanding from its fine balcony a rich and extensive view at once of...

Well! this is the first place I have seen which has been capable in any degree of obliterating the idea of Genoa la superba, which has till now pursued me, nor could the gloomy...

Well, then! here we are, admirably lodged at Strofani's in the Piazza di Spagna, and have only to chuse what we will see and talk on first among this galaxy of rarities which da...

This is a town full of beauties, wits, and rarities: numberless persons of the first eminence have always adorned it, and the present inhabitants have no mind to degenerate; whi...

For _Cupid_, advancing to a slow tune, steadies with his wand the rolling mass upon the stage, that then begins to teem with its _motley inhabitant_, and just representative of...

The Christmas functions here were showy, and I thought well-contrived; the public ones are what I speak of: but I was present lately at a private merrymaking, where all distinct...

When I spoke of their beggars, many not unlike Salvator Rosa's Job at the Santa Croce palace, I ought not to have omitted their eloquence, and various talents. We talked to a la...