Turin 229 



quarters of the kingdom to give a universal alarm of great 

 troops of brigands being on the actual march, plundering and 

 burning everywhere, at the instigation of aristocrats, and calling 

 on the people to arm immediately in their defence: that by 

 intelligence afterwards, received from different parts of the 

 kingdom, it was found that these couriers must have been 

 dispatched from Paris at the same time.^ Forged orders of the 

 king in council were likewise sent, directing the people to burn 

 the chateaus of the aristocratical party; and thus, as it were by 

 magic, all France was armed at the same moment, and the 

 peasants instigated to commit the enormities which have since 

 disgraced the kingdom. — 22 miles. 



26th. This being the first Italian city of renown for beauty 

 that I have seen, I have been all eyes to-day. Some travellers 

 have represented it as the prettiest town in Europe, and the 

 Strada di Po the finest street. I hurried to it with eagerness. I 

 was in the middle of it, asking for it. Questa, questa I replied an 

 officer, holding up his hands, as if to point out an object of great 

 beauty which I did not see, and in truth I saw it not. It is 

 straight and broad and nearly regular. Two rows of brick 

 barns might be so equally. The houses are of an ugly obfuscated 

 brick; a few have stucco, and that old and dirty; the scaffold 

 holes in the walls of all the rest are left unfilled ; some of them 

 are enlarged by time, and several courses of bricks between those 

 holes not pointed, which has as bad an effect ; the windows are 

 narrow and poor; some with iron balconies — some without; 

 the arcades, for there is a row on each side of the street, would be 

 destructive of beauty, if it was here: the arches are plastered, 

 which patches the line with white: and through them are 

 exhibited nothing but poor shops that encumber their spans with 

 all sorts of lumber ; the lamps are fifty or sixty yards asunder. 

 In a word, there are fifty streets at London to which this cannot 

 be compared. If those who have travelled in Italy think this 

 street fine, what am I to meet with in other towns ? — The Strada 

 della Dora Grossa is by far a finer street than that of the Po, 

 but the houses are greatly too high. There is a beautiful arcade 

 entrance to the herb-market, which seems to have furnished the 

 idea of that at the new buildings of Somerset House. The 

 streets are almost all quite regular and at right angles. I 

 expected that this circumstance would have been attended with 

 much more beauty than it is. It gives too great a sameness; 

 the constant return of the same angles tires the eye; and I am 



' Afterwards at Paris this fact was confirmed to me. — Author's note. 



