Venice 255 



enjo}Tnent than consumption; the sobriety of the people does 

 much, the nature of their food more; pastes, macaroni, and 

 vegetables are much easier provided than beef and mutton. 

 Cookery, as in France, enables them to spread a table for half 

 the expense of an English one. If cheapness of living, spectacles, 

 and pretty women are a man's objects in fixing his residence, let 

 him live at Venice : for myself I think I would not be an inhabi- 

 tant to be Doge, with the power of the Grand Turk. Brick and 

 stone, and sky and water, and not a field nor a bush even for 

 fancy to pluck a rose from ! My heart cannot expand in such 

 a place : an admirable monument of human industry, but not a 

 theatre for the feelings of a farmer ! — Give me the fields, and let 

 others take the tide of human life at Charing Cross and Fleet 

 Ditch. ^ Called again on Signore Arduino ; converse on the state 

 of agriculture in Italy, and the causes which have contributed 

 to accelerate or retard it; and from him to a conservatorio at the 

 Ospalletto.2 Dr. Burney, in his pleasing and elegant tour, has 

 given an account of them. 



2nd. A tour among Chiese, Scuole, e Pallazzi ; but there is 

 such an abundance of buildings and collections to which books 

 send one that much time is always lost. The only traveller's 

 guide that would be worth a farthing would be a little book that 

 gave a catalogue of the best articles to be seen in every to\vn, in 

 the order of merit. So that if a man in passing has but one hour, 

 he uses it in seeing the best object the place contains; if he has 

 three days he takes the best the three days will give him; and 

 if he stays three months he may fill it with the like gradation; 

 and what is of equal consequence he may stop when he pleases 

 and see no more ; confident as far as he has extended his view 

 that he has seen the objects that will pay him best for his 

 attention. There is no such book, and so much the worse for 

 travellers. In the library of St. Mark among the antiques are 

 Commodus, Augustus, and Adrian; and more particularly to be 

 noted, a fallen gladiator: a singular and whimsical Leda, by 

 Cocenius. In the Palazzo Barbarigo, the Venus and the 

 Magdalen of Titian are beautiful, though they have lost much of 

 their glowing warmth by time. Two Rembrandts in the Palazzo 

 Farsetti. A Holy Family, by Andrea del Sarto. Titian's 

 portrait, by himself. I finished by going up St. Mark's tower, 

 which is high enough to command a distant view of all the 

 islands on which Venice is built, and a great range of coast and 



' See Mr. Boswell's agreeable Life of Dr. Johnson. — Author's note. 

 * The Ospedaletto. 



