Bologna 291 



of agriculture in this Institute gives me a poor opinion of it. 

 Bologna may produce great men, but she will not owe them great 

 obligations for this establishment. View some churches and 

 palaces, which I did not see when here before. In the church 

 of St. Dominico, a slaughter of the Innocents, by Guido, which 

 will command attention, how little inclined soever you may be to 

 give it. The mother and the dead child, in the foreground, are 

 truly pathetic, and the whole piece finely executed. The number 

 of highly decorated churches at Bologna is surprising. They 

 county I think, above a hundred; and all the towns, and many 

 villages in Italy, offer the same spectacle; the sums of money 

 invested in this manner in the 15th and i6th centuries, and some 

 even in the 17th, are truly amazing; the palaces were built at 

 the same time, and at this period all the rest of Europe was in a 

 state of barbarism: national wealth must have been immense 

 to have spared such an enormous superfluity. This idea recurs 

 everywhere in Italy, and wants explanation from modem 

 historians. The Italian republics had all the trade of Europe; 

 but what was Europe in that age ? England and Holland have 

 had it in this age without any such effects ; with us architecture 

 takes quite a different turn ; it is the diffusion of comfort in the 

 houses of private people; not concentrated magnificence in 

 public works. But there does not appear from the size and 

 number of the towns in Italy, built in the same ages, to have 

 been any want of this — private houses were numerous and well 

 erected. A difference in manners, introducing new and unheard- 

 of luxuries, has probably been the cause of the change. In such 

 a diary as this one can only touch on a subject — but the historians 

 should dwell on them, rather than on battles and sieges. 



6th. Left Bologna with Abbate Amoretti in a vettura, but the 

 day so fine and frosty that we walked three-fourths of the way 

 to Modena. Pass Ansolazen, the seat of the Marchese Abber- 

 gatti, who, after having passed his grand climacteric, has just 

 married a ballarina of seventeen. The country to Modena is 

 the same as the flat part of the Bolognese; it is p. 11 a dead level 

 plain, enclosed by neatly wrought hedges against the road, with 

 a view of distinguishing properties. I thought, on entering the 

 Modenese dominions, across the river, that I observed rather a 

 decline in neatness and good management. View the city; the 

 streets are of a good breadth, and most of the houses with good 

 fronts, with a clean painted or well-washed face, — the effect 

 pleasing. In the evening to the theatre, which is of the oddest 

 form I have seen. We had a hodge-podge of a comedy, in which 



