Padua 249 



nighty returned to the city, after a rich day, that pays for the 

 trouble of travelhng. 



26th. My friendly Abbate, continuing his obliging offices, had 

 the goodness to accompany me this morning to a very famous 

 woollen fabric, at present under the direction of an Englishman, 

 and to a magazine of earthenware in imitation of Mr. Wedg- 

 wood. It is surely a triumph of the arts in England to see in 

 Italy Etruscan forms copied from English models. It is a better 

 imitation than many I have seen in France. View the Olympic 

 theatre of Palladio, which pleases all the world ; nothing can be 

 more beautiful than the form, or more elegant than the colonnade 

 that surrounds it. Of all his works here, I like the Palazzo 

 Barbarana least. I am sorry to see that most of Palladio's 

 edifices are of bricks stuccoed, except the Palazzo Raggione, 

 which is of durable stone; and that there is hardly one of them 

 which is not out of repair. The roof of the Palazzo di Raggione, 

 which must offend every eye, is not of Palladio; only the case 

 of arcades that surround the building, which is one vast room of 

 200 feet by 80, used for the courts of justice, and also as a com- 

 mon Jakes by the mob, and dreadfully garnished. A pretty use 

 to which to apply an edifice of Palladio. The brick columns of 

 this great architect are of the finest work I ever saw ; and some 

 of the stucco only now failing, after 200 years. At Verona and 

 Vicenza there are very few new houses, and no signs, that I 

 could see, of the wealth and prosperity of the present age. There 

 are exceptions, but they are few. A silk merchant here has 

 built a good house ; and Signore Cordelina, an advocate at Venice, 

 a large and handsome one, that cost 100,000 ducats, without 

 being finished : he made his fortune by pleading. 



27/A. To Padua. The country, which has been called a 

 garden by travellers, not at all better cultivated than before, but 

 deeper and richer. The same flat, lined into rows of pollards 

 and vines in the same manner; very little irrigation, except some 

 rice. Waited on Signore Arduino, experimenter in agriculture 

 on a farm, or rather a garden, of 12 acres, given by the state. I 

 had heard much of this economical garden, and of the great 

 number of useful experiments made in it; so much, indeed, that 

 it weighed considerably with me in the arrangement of my jour- 

 ney; Venice was no object; and I could not, if I took Padua, 

 have time for the Pontine marshes and Rome, which by the direct 

 road I could have reached from Milan ; but an experimental farm, 

 the first I was assured in Europe, and which had thrown light 

 on various important inquiries, was an object which I ought, 



