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Lincolnshire. We dined excellently at Ferrara, a 
vast lifeless town, or to use Ganganelli’s words, 
“une belle et vaste solitude, presqu aussi silentieuse 
que le tombeau de lV Arioste qui y repose.” We had 
not time to visit Ariosto’s tomb. I regretted more 
that we did not pass through Cento, where are 
some celebrated paintings of Guercino’s, one of my 
favourites. I have made ample notes on the pic- 
tures of Bologna, which I hope will amuse you at 
my return, so I say nothing about them now. I 
shall tire even you with what I have to say about 
pictures and statues. The approach to Venice 
struck me, but the place on the whole disappointed 
me; it has formerly been one of the finest towns 
in Europe, but others have so far surpassed it, that 
it is now only the most singular one. We spent 
seventeen days there busily enough ; saw with due 
attention most of the pictures of Paul Veronese, 
Titian, and Tintoret, which abound in Venice ; and 
I think I understand these painters’ works tolera- 
bly ; their principal: merit you know is in their 
colouring. I was amazed to find every thing in 
Venice prodigiously dirty. St. Mark’s church, one 
of the richest in the world in oriental marbles, por- 
phyries, jaspers, &c., as well as mosaics, is so blacked 
and dirtied in every possible manner, that one thing 
can hardly be distinguished from another; the taste 
of it is very bad Gothic; pillars intrinsically worth 
some hundred pounds each, even to cut in pieces, 
are piled on one another in all parts without any 
judgement. We saw Venice in all its glory, it being 
Ascension time, when everybody resorts there ; and 
