268 Travels in Italy- 



Kent, I gave an account in my Eastern Tour. I accordingly 

 went, in the evening, to Mr. Taylor's conversazione. He has 

 handsome apartments in the Palazzo Zampiere, and lives here 

 agreeably with his beautiful and amiable family; a finer progeny 

 of daughters and sons is hardly to be seen, or that forms a more 

 pleasing society. As I did not know, till I got to Bologna, that 

 Mr. Taylor had left the court of Carlsruhe, I was eager to hear 

 why he had quitted a situation which was so congenial with his 

 love of agriculture. This gentleman travelling in Germany 

 became known to the Margrave of Baden, where that enthu- 

 siastic love of agriculture, which, for the good of mankind some 

 minds feel, induced him to take a farm of that prince. Thus was 

 a gentleman, from the best cultivated part of Kent, fixed on a 

 farm of five hundred acres in Germany. He carried his point, 

 improved the farm, stayed four years, and would have continued 

 to the infinite advantage of the country, if the ministers of the 

 Margrave had had as much understanding and as liberal a mind 

 as their master. I am inclined to believe that no man can 

 succeed on the continent of Europe (unless under a prince with 

 a character of such decided energy as the late King of Prussia) 

 provided he be really practical. He has no chance if he be not 

 well furnished with the rubbish which is found in academies and 

 societies : give him a jargon of learning, the science of names and 

 words, letting things and practice go elsewhere, and he will then 

 make his way and be looked up to. To the opera, where there 

 is nothing worth hearing or seeing, except only a young singer, 

 Signora Nava, whose voice is one of the clearest and sweetest 

 tones I ever heard; she has great powers, and will have, for she 

 is very young, great expression. It was the Theodore re di Corse, 

 of Paiesello. 



13/A. The Pellegrino and St. Marco being full, has fixed me in 

 this brutal hole, I Tre Maurretti, which is the only execrable inn 

 I have been in (in a city) since I entered Italy. It has every 

 circumstance that can render it detestable; dirt, negligence, 

 filth, vermin, and impudence. You sit, walk, eat, drink, and 

 sleep with equal inconvenience. A tour among the palaces 

 and churches. The great collection of paintings in the Zampieri 

 palace contains a few pieces of such exquisite merit that they 

 rivet the spectator by admiration. The St. Peter, of Guido; the 

 Hagar, of Guercino; and the Dance, of Albano. Monsieur 

 Cochin says, the Guido is not only a chef d'ceuvre, but the finest 

 picture in Italy, enfin c'est un chef d'ceuvre et le tableau le plus 

 parfait, par la reunion de toutes les parties de la peinture qui soil 



