I

FLORENCE, July 9.

MY DEAR HARRY,-We are come hither, and I have received another letter from you with "Hosier's Ghost." Your last put me in pain for you, when you talked of going to Ireland; but now I find your brother and sister go with you, I am not much concerned. Should I be? Should I be? You have but to say, for my

feelings are extremely at your service to dispose as you please. Let us see you are to come back to stand for some place; that will be about April. 'Tis a sort of thing I should do, too; and then we should see one another, and that would be charming: but it is a sort of thing I have no mind to do; and then we shall not see one another, unless you would come hither-but that you cannot do: nay, I would not have you, for then I shall be gone.-So, there are many ifs that just signify nothing at all. Return I must sooner than I shall like. I am happy here to a degree. I'll tell you my situation. I am lodged with Mr. Mann, the best of creatures. I have a terreno

all to myself, with an open gallery on the Arno, where I am now writing to you. Over against me is the famous Gallery: and, on either hand, two fair bridges.

* "Admiral Hosier's Ghost" is the title of a ballad by Glover on the death of Admiral Hosier, a distinguished admiral, who had been sent with a squadron to blockade the Spanish treasure-ships in Porto Bello, but was prohibited from attacking them in the harbour. He died in 1727, according to the account that the poet adopted, of mortification at the inaction to which his orders compelled him; but according to another statement, more trustworthy if less poetical, of fever.

Is not this charming and cool? The air is so serene, and so secure, that one sleeps with all the windows and doors thrown open to the river, and only covered with a slight gauze to keep away the gnats. Lady Pomfret has a charming conversation once a week. She has taken a vast palace and a vast garden, which is vastly commode, especially to the cicisbeo-part of mankind, who have free indulgence to wander in pairs about the arbours. You know her daughters: Lady Sophia is still, nay she must be, the beauty she was: Lady Charlotte is much improved, and is the cleverest girl in the world; speaks the purest Tuscan, like any Florentine. The Princess Craon has a constant pharaoh and supper every night, where one is quite at one's ease. I am going into the country with her and the prince for a little while, to a villa of the Great Duke's. The people are good-humoured here and easy; and what makes me pleased with them, they are pleased with me. One loves to find people care for one, when they can have no view in it.

You see how glad I am to have reasons for not returning; I wish I had no better.

As to "Hosier's Ghost," I think it very easy, and consequently pretty; but, from the ease, should never have guessed it Glover's. I delight in your, “the patriots cry it up, and the courtiers cry it down, and the hawkers cry it up and down," and your laconic history of the King and Sir Robert, on going to Hanover, and turning out the Duke of Argyle. The epigram, too, you sent me on the same occasion is charming.

Unless I sent you back news that you and others send me, I can send you none. I have left the Conclave, which is the only stirring thing in this part of the world, except the child that the Queen of Naples is to be delivered of in August. There is no likelihood the Conclave will end, unless the messages take effect which 'tis said the Imperial and French ministers have sent to their respective courts for leave to quit the Corsini for the Albani faction: otherwise there will never be a pope. Corsini has lost the only one he could have ventured to make pope, and him he designed; 'twas Cenci, a relation of the Corsini's mistress. The last morning Corsini made him rise, stuffed a dish of chocolate down his throat, and would carry him to the scrutiny. The poor old creature went, came back, and died. I am sorry to have lost the sight of the Pope's coronation, but I might have staid for seeing it till I had been old enough to be pope myself.1

Harry, what luck the Chancellor has! first, indeed, to be in himself so great a man; but then in accident: he is made Chief Justice and peer, when Talbot is made Chancellor and peer. Talbot dies in a twelvemonth, and leaves him the seals at an age when others are scarce made Solicitors:-then marries his son into one of the first families of Britain, obtains a patent for a Marquisate and eight thousand pounds a year after the Duke of Kent's death: the Duke dies in a fortnight, and leaves them all! People talk of Fortune's

'The contest was caused by the death of Clement XII. The successful candidate was Benedict XIV.

wheel, that is always rolling: troth, my Lord Hardwicke has overtaken her wheel, and rolled away with it.... Yours ever.

A FLORENTINE WEDDING-ADDISON'S DESCRIPTIONS ARE BORROWED FROM BOOKS—A SONG OF BONDELMONTI'S, WITH A LATIN VERSION BY GRAY, AND AN ENGLISH ONE BY THE WRITER.

TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ.

FLORENCE, Oct. 2, 1740, N.S.

DEAR WEST, T'other night as we (you know who we are) were walking on the charming bridge, just before going to a wedding assembly, we said, "Lord, I wish, just as we are got into the room, they would call us out, and say, West is arrived! We would make him dress instantly, and carry him back to the entertainment. How he would stare and wonder at a thousand things, that no longer strike us as odd!" Would not you? One agreed that you should have come directly by sea from Dover, and be set down at Leghorn, without setting foot in any other foreign town, and so land at Us, in all your first full amaze; for you are to know, that astonishment rubs off violently; we did not cry out Lord! half so much at Rome as at Calais, which to this hour I look upon as one of the most surprising cities in the universe. dear child, what if you were to take this little seajaunt? One would recommend Sir John Norris's convoy to you, but one should be laughed at now for

My

supposing that he is ever to sail beyond Torbay.I The Italians take Torbay for an English town in the hands of the Spaniards, after the fashion of Gibraltar, and imagine 'tis a wonderful strong place, by our fleet's having retired from before it so often, and so often returned.

We went to this wedding that I told you of; 'twas a charming feast: a large palace finely illuminated; there were all the beauties, all the jewels, and all the sugar-plums of Florence. Servants loaded with great chargers full of comfits heap the tables with them, the women fall on with both hands, and stuff their pockets and every creek and corner about them. You would be as much amazed at us as at anything you saw: instead of being deep in the liberal arts, and being in the Gallery every morning, as I thought of course to be sure I would be, we are in all the idleness and amusements of the town. For me, I am grown so lazy, and so tired of seeing sights, that, though I have been at Florence six months, I have not seen Leghorn, Pisa, Lucca, or Pistoia; nay, not so much as one of the Great Duke's villas. I have contracted so great an aversion to inns and post

Sir John Norris was one of the most gallant and skilful seamen of his time; but an expedition in which he had had the command had lately proved fruitless. He had been instructed to cruise about the Bay of Biscay, in the hope of intercepting some of the Spanish treasure-ships; but the weather had been so uninterruptedly stormy that he had been compelled to return to port without having even seen an enemy. The following lines were addressed to him upon this occasion :

Homeward, oh! bend thy course; the seas are rough;
To the Land's End who sails, has sailed enough.