262 Travels in Italy 



after dining with Lords Oxford and Bolingbroke, and going in 

 the evening to some scrub, says he hates to be a prince and a 

 scoundrel the same day. I had to-night all this feeling with a 

 vengeance. From the representation of a pleasing and elegant 

 performance, the music of which was well adapted to string 

 one's feelings to a certain pitch, in clear unison with the pleasure 

 that sparkled in so many eyes and sounded from so many 

 hands — I stepped at once in full contrast into the bark detto 

 Corriere di Bologna ; a cabin about ten feet square, round which 

 sat in silence, and the darkness visible of a wretched lamp, a 

 company whose rolling eyes examined, without one word of 

 reception, each passenger that entered. The wind howled and 

 the rain beat in at the hole left for entering. My feelings that 

 thrilled during the evening were dissipated in a moment, and 

 the gloom of my bosom was soon in unison with that of the scene. 

 "■^Of this voyage from Venice to Bologna, all the powers of 

 language would fail me to give the idea I would wish to impress. 

 The time I passed in it I rank among the most disagreeable days 

 I ever experienced, and by a thousand degrees the worst since 

 I left England ; yet I had no choice : the roads are so infamously 

 bad, or rather so impracticable, that there are no vetturini ; 

 even those whose fortune admits posting make this passage by 

 water, and when I found that Monsieur de la Lande, secretary 

 to the French ambassador at Turin, had made the same journey, 

 in the same conveyance, and yet in his books says not a word 

 against the accommodation, how was I to have divined that it 

 could prove so execrable? A little more thought, however, 

 would have told me that it was too cheap to be good, the price 

 for the whole voyage of 125 miles is only 30 pauls (17s. 6d.), for 

 which you are boarded. After a day's spitting of a dozen people, 

 in 10 feet square (enough to make a dog sick), mattresses are 

 spread on the ground, and you rest on them as you can, packed 

 almost like herrings in a barrel; they are then rolled up and 

 tumbled under a bulk, without the least attention which side 

 is given you the night after; add to this the odours of various 

 sorts, easy to imagine. At dinner, the cabin is the kitchen, and 

 the padrone the cook, he takes snuff, wipes his nose with his 

 fingers, and the knife with his handkerchief, while he prepares 

 the victuals, which he handles before you, till you are sick of 

 the idea of eating. But on changing the bark to one whose 

 cabin was too small to admit any cookery, he brought his 

 steaks and sausages rolled up in paper, and that in his flag of 

 abomination (as Smollett calls a continental handkerchief), which 



