well sounding a recollection as Bologna; but it is still Modena, the native place of Tassoni. I went to the cathedral to get sight of the Secchia which is hung up there, but found the doors shut; and as ugly a pile of building as a bad cathedral could make. The lions before the doors, look as if some giant's children had made them in sport, wretchedly sculptured, and gaping as if in agony at their bad legs. It was a disappointment to me not to see the Bucket. The Secchia Rapita is my oldest Italian acquaintance, and I reckoned upon saying to the hero of it Ah, ha! There you are!' There is something provoking, and yet something fine too, in flitting in this manner from city to city. You are vexed at not being able to stop and see pictures, &c.; but you have a sort of royal taste of great pleasures in passing. The best thing one can do to get at the interior of any thing in this hurry, is to watch the countenances of the people. I thought the looks of the Bolognese and Modenese singularly answered to their character in books. What is more singular, is the extraordinary difference, and nationality of as

pect, in the people of two cities at so little distance from one another. The Bolognese have a broad steady look, not without geniality and richness. You can imagine them to give birth to painters. The Modenese are crustylooking and carking, with a dry twinkle at you, and a narrow mouth. They are critics and satirists, on the face of them. For my part, I never took very kindly to Tassoni, for all my young acquaintance with him; and in the war which he has celebrated, I am now, whatever I was before, decidedly for the Bolognese."

On the 12th of September, after dining at Modena, we slept at Reggio, where Ariosto was born. His father was captain of the citadel. Boiardo, the poet's precursor, was born at Scandiano, not far off. I ran, before the gates were shut, to get a look at the citadel, and was much the better for not missing it. Poets leave a greater charm than any men upon places they have rendered famous, because they sympathize more than any other men with localities, and identify themselves with the least beauty of art or nature,--a turret, an old tree.

The river Ilissus at Athens is found to be a sorry brook; but it runs talking for ever of Plato and Sophocles.

At Parma, I tore my hair mentally, (much the pleasantest way,) at not being able to see the Correggios. Piacenza pleased one to be in it, on account of the name. But a list of places in Italy is always like a succession of musical chords. Parma, Piacenza, Voghera, Tortona, Felizana,-sounds like these make a road-book a music-book. At Asti, a pretty place with a "west-end," full of fine houses, I went to look at the Alfieri palace, and tried to remember the poet with pleasure: but I could not like him. To me, his austerity is only real in the unpleasantest part of it. The rest is affected. The human heart is a tough business in his hands; and he thumps and turns it about in his short, violent, and pounding manner, as if it were an iron on a blacksmith's anvil. He loved liberty like a tyrant, and the Pretender's widow like a lord.

The first sight of the Po, and the mulberrytrees, and meadows, and the Alps, was at once classical, and Italian, and northern; and made

us feel that we were taking a great new step nearer home. Poirino, a pretty little place, with a name full of pear-trees, presented us with a sight like a passage in Boccaccio. This was a set of Dominican friars with the chief at their head, issuing out of two coaches, and proceeding along the corridor of the inn to dinner, each holding a bottle of wine in his hand, with the exception of the abbot, who held two. The wine was doubtless their own, that upon the road not being sufficiently orthodox.

Turin is a noble city, like a set of Regent Streets, made twice as tall. We found here the most military-looking officers we remember to have seen, fine, tall, handsome fellows, whom the weather had beaten but not conquered, very gentlemanly, and combining the officer and soldier as completely as could be wished. They had served under Bonaparte. When I saw them, I could understand how it was that the threatened Piedmontese revolution was more dreaded by the legitimates than any other movement in Italy. It was betrayed by the heir-apparent, who is said to

be as different a looking person, as the reader might suppose. The royal aspect in the Sardinias is eminent among the raffish of the earth.

At Turin was the finest dancer I ever saw, a girl of the name of De' Martini. M. Laurent should invite her over. She appeared to me to unite the agility of the French school, with all that you would expect from the Italian. Italian dancers are in general as indifferent, as the French are celebrated: but the French have no mind with their bodies: they are busts in barbers' shops, stuck upon legs in a fit. You wonder how any lower extremities so lively can leave such an absence of all expression in the upper. Now De' Martini is a dancer all over, and does not omit her face. She is a body not merely saltatory, as a machine might be, but full of soul. When she came bounding on the stage, in two or three long leaps like a fawn, I should have thought she was a Frenchwoman, but the style undeceived me. She came bounding in front, as if she would have pitched herself into the arms of the pit; then made a sudden drop, and addressed three enthusiastic courtesies to the