periods that we must refer for the plebeianism of parlours.

The Casa Lanfranchi is said to have been built by Michael Angelo, and is worthy of him. It is in a bold and broad style throughout, with those harmonious graces of proportion which are sure to be found in an Italian mansion. The outside is of rough marble. Lower down the Lung'Arno, on the same side of the way, is a mansion cased with polished marble. But I have written of these matters in another work. The furniture of our apartments was good and respectable, but of the plainest and cheapest description, consistent with that character. It was chosen by Mr Shelley, who intended to beg my acceptance of it, and who knew, situated as he and I were, that in putting about us such furniture as he used himself, he could not pay us a handsomer or more welcome compliment. When the apartments were fitted up, Lord Byron insisted upon making us a present of the goods himself. Mr Shelley did not chuse to contest the point. He explained the circumstance to me; and this is the amount of the

VOL. I.

2

splendour with which some persons have been pleased to surround me at his Lordship's expense. I will here mention what I have happened to omit respecting another and greater matter. Two hundred pounds were sent me from Italy, to enable me to leave England with comfort. They came from Lord Byron, and nothing was said to me of security, or any thing like it. Lord Byron had offered, a year or two before, through Mr Shelley, to send me four hundred pounds for a similar purpose, which offer I declined. I now accepted the two hundred pounds; but I found afterwards that his lordship had had a bond for the money from Mr Shelley. I make no comment on these things. I merely state the truth, because others have mis-stated it, and because I begin to be sick of maintaining a silence, which does no good to others, and is only turned against one's self.

We had not been in the house above an hour or two, when my friend brought the celebrated surgeon, Vaccà, to see Mrs Hunt. He had a pleasing intelligent face, and was the most gentlemanlike Italian I ever saw. Vaccà

pronounced his patient to be in a decline; and little hope was given us by others that she would survive beyond the year. She is now alive, and likely to live many years; and Vaccà is dead. I do not say this to his disparagement; for he was very skilful, and deserved his celebrity. But it appears to me, from more than one remarkable instance, that there is a superstition about what are called declines and consumptions, from which the most eminent of the profession are not free. I suspect, that people of this tendency, with a proper mode of living, may reach to as good a period of existence as any other. The great secret in this as in all other cases, and indeed in almost all moral as well as physical cases of ill, is in diet. If some demi-god could regulate for mankind what they should eat and drink, he would put an end, at one stroke, to half the troubles which the world undergo, some of the most romantic sorrows with which they flatter themselves not excepted. It is by not exceeding in this point, and by keeping natural hours, that such nations as the Persians are enabled to be cheerful, even under a load of despotism;

while others, among the freest on earth, are proverbial for spleen and melancholy. Our countrymen, manly as they are, effeminately bewail the same climate, which the gypsy, with his ruddy cheek, laughs at. But one change is linked with another; there must be more leisure and other comforts to stand people instead of these ticklings and crammings of their despair; and the vanity of old patchwork endurance is loth to see any thing but vanity in the work of reformation.

The next day, while in the drawing-room with Lord Byron, I had a curious specimen of Italian manners. It was like a scene in an opera. One of his servants, a young man, suddenly came in smiling, and was followed by his sister, a handsome brunette, in a bodice and sleeves, and her own hair. She advanced to his Lordship to welcome him back to Pisa, and present him with a basket of flowers. In doing this, she took his hand and kissed it; then turned to the stranger, and kissed his hand also. I thought it a very becoming, unbecoming action; and that at least it should have been acknowledged by a kiss

of another description; and the girl appeared to be of the same opinion, at least with regard to one of us, who stood blushing and looking in her eyes, and not knowing well what to be at. I thought we ought to have struck up a quartett. But there might have ensued a quintett, not so harmonious; and the scene was hastily concluded.

It is the custom in Italy, as it was in England, for inferiors to kiss your hand in coming and going. There is an air of good will in it that is agreeable; but the implied sense of inferiority is not so pleasant. Servants have a better custom of wishing you a good evening when they bring in lights. To this you may respond in like manner; after which it seems. impossible for the sun to « go down on the wrath,»> if there is any, of either party.

In a day or two Mr Shelley took leave of us to return to Lerici for the rest of the season, meaning however to see us more than once in the interval. I spent one delightful afternoon with him, wandering about Pisa, and visiting the cathedral. On the night of the same day, he took a post-chaise for Leghorn, intending