288 Travels in Italy 



have rarely been brought together by such mere accident that 

 have better turned the little nothings of life to account (if I may 

 venture to use the expression), by their best cement, — good 

 humour. 



2nd. The day of departure must needs give some anxiety to 

 those who cannot throw their small evils on servants. Renew 

 my connection with that odious Italian race, the vetturini. — I 

 had agreed for a compagnon de voyage ; but was alone, which I 

 liked much better. To step at once from an agreeable society 

 into an Italian voitiire is a kind of malady which does not agree 

 with my nerves. The best people appear but blanks at such a 

 moment: the mind having gotten a particular impulse, one 

 cannot so soon give it another. The inn at Maschere, where I 

 found no fire but in partnership with some Germans, did not 

 tend much to revive cheerfulness, so I closed myself in that which 

 Sancho wisely says covers a man all over like a cloak. — 18 miles. 



T,rd. Dine at Pietra ]\Iala, and while the dinner was preparing 

 I walked to the volcano, as it is called. It is a very singular 

 spectacle, on the slope of a mountain, without any hole or 

 apparent crevice, or anything that tends towards a crater; the 

 fire bums among some stones as if they were its fuel ; the flame 

 fills the space of a cube of about two feet, besides which there 

 are ten or twelve smaller and inconsiderable flames. These I 

 extinguished in the manner Monsieur de la Lande mentions, 

 by rubbing hard with a stick among the small stones : the flame 

 catches again in a few moments, but in a manner that convinces 

 me the whole is merely a vent to a current of inflammable air, 

 which Signore Amoretti informed me has been lately asserted 

 by some person who has tried experiments on it. The flame 

 revives with small explosions, exactly like those of inflammable 

 air fired from a small phial ; and when I returned to the inn the 

 landlord had a bottle of it, which he bums at pleasure to show 

 to his guests. The cause of this phenomenon has been sought 

 in almost everything but the real fact. I am surprised the fire 

 is not apphed to some use. It would boil a considerable copper 

 constantly without the expense of a farthing. If I had it at 

 Bradfield I would bum brick or lime, and boil or bake potatoes 

 for bullocks and hogs at the same time. Why not build a house 

 on the spot? and let the kitchen-chimney surround the flame? 

 there would be no danger in living in such a house, certainly as 

 long as the flame continued to bum. It is tme the idea of a 

 mine of inflammable air just under a house would sometimes, 

 perhaps, alarm one's female visitors; they would be afraid of a 



