Vicenza 247 



was attended with what is to me a melancholy impression — the 

 utter oblivion in which such hosts are now lost ! time has swept 

 their memories from the earth — has left them no traces in the 

 records of mankind; yet here were wit and beauty, wealth and 

 power ; the vibrations of hope and fear ; the agitations of exertion 

 and enterprise — all buried in the silence of seventeen hundred 

 years ! — I i-ead the works of so few poets that I know not if the 

 idea of such oblivion has been to them as melancholy as it is to 

 me ; if so, they have doubtless given energy to the sentiment, by 

 the force and beauty of their expressions. 



2^rd. This morning I took a cicerone to attend me to view 

 churches and palaces, an uncomfortable method, but when a 

 traveller has one master pursuit, such secondary objects must 

 give way. The great fault here, as everjnvhere else, is being 

 carried to too many things. Nothing strikes more at Verona 

 than the works of an architect, whose name is little known in 

 England, St. Michael Michieli;^ they are of distinguished merit, 

 and must please every eye. The chapel of the Pellegrini family, 

 in the Bernardine church, and the rotunda of St. Georgia, are 

 beautiful edifices. There is something singular in the Palazzo 

 Bevilaqua, an idea v/hich might have been copied with more 

 success than many others that have been repeated often. The 

 Palazzo di Consiglia is simple and elegant, and presents one of 

 the most pleasing examples of an arcade for a street or square. 

 The theatre is large, but nothing after Milan. My expenses at 

 Brescia and at Verona are, dinner 3 pauls, supper 2, chamber 2; 

 which, at 5d. English, are 2S. iid. a-day; and as I have rooms 

 not at all bad, good beds, and am as well served at the meals as 

 I require, it is remarkably cheap. 



24/A. The country to Vicenza is all flat, and mostly of a 

 singular face; rows of elm and maple pollards, with vines 

 trained up, and from tree to tree ; between the rows arable. 

 This system is not disagreeable till it grows tedious to the 

 eye. — 32 miles, 



25/A. Wait on Count Tiene, to whom I had a recommenda- 

 tion; he opened the letter, but found it was to another Count 

 Tiene, who lived in the country, near Vicenza; reading in it, 

 however, some expressions of commendation, which friends are 

 apt to use in such letters, he, with great ease and politeness, as he 

 returned me the paper, offered me any assistance in his power: 

 " Yours, Sir, is an errand that ought to recommend you to all 

 mankind; and if you find the least difficulties with others, I beg 



^ Sammichele. 



