2 34 Travels in Italy 



and stopping as often as you please : I walked most of the way, 

 and generally out-walked the coach, except when there was any 

 little descent. A gentleman, a proprietor and cultivator of rice 

 near Verceil_, supped with us, who was communicative. — 45 miles. 



^rd. To Novara, much rice; some yet uncut; they are 

 threshing it everpvhere, and we meet gleaners loaded with it : a 

 nasty country, as ill to the eye as to the health : there hang the 

 limbs of a robber in the trees, in unison with the somhre and 

 pestiferous aspect of a flat woody region. Cross the Tesino, 

 deep, clear, and rapid. This river parts the dominions of the 

 King of Sardinia from those of the emperor. At Baffulara cross 

 the naviglio grande, the greatest canal for irrigation that was 

 ever made. Sleep at Massenta. — 30 miles. 



/^h, Sunday. Reach Milan in the forenoon. This great city 

 stands in the midst of a dead level country, so thickly planted 

 that you see nothing of it till you are in the streets. To the 

 Albergo del Pozzo, in time to wait on the Abbate Amoretti, 

 secretary of the patriotic society, to whom I had letters from 

 Monsieur Broussonet and Signore Songa of London: I found 

 him admirably well lodged, in the palazzo of the Marquis de 

 Cusina: this, said I to myself, looks well to find a man of letters 

 in a splendid apartment, and not poked, like a piece of lumber, 

 into a garret: it is a good feature in the Italian nobility. I 

 entered his apartment, which is a cube of about thirty feet, from 

 a great saloon of forty or fifty. He received me with easy and 

 agreeable politeness which impresses one at first sight in his 

 favour. Soon after he returned my visit. I find him an agree- 

 able, well-informed, and interesting character. Waited also on 

 the Abbate Oriani, astronomer royal, who expressed every wish 

 to be of use to me. At night to the opera ; a most noble theatre ; 

 the largest as well as handsomest I have seen; the scenes and 

 decorations beautiful. Though it is Sunday, I look with amaze- 

 ment at the house, for it is three parts full, even while much of 

 the world are in the country : — how can such a town as Milan do 

 this ? Here are six rows of boxes, thirty-six in a row; the three 

 best rows let at 40 louis d'or a box. This is marvellous for an 

 inland town without commerce or great manufactures. It is 

 the Plough alone that can do it. I am delighted with the 

 accommodation of the pit; one sits on broad easy sofas, with 

 a good space to stir one's legs in: young persons may bear being 

 trussed and pinioned on a row of narrow benches, but I am old 

 and lazy, and if I do not sit at my ease, would not give a fig to sit 

 there at all. — 10 miles. 



