could not surprise an inhabitant of London; but the fancy is amused by a visit to the Boromean Islands,

des plus petites acquisitions, a réduit enfin les Génois à leurs montagnes nues et stériles, dont ce peuple, tout industrieux qu'il est, peut à peine tirer le moindre avantage. En passant la Bouquette j'ai considéré ce défilé étroit, bordé de précipices, et dominé par des rochers escarpés. J'ai bien compris que sans la politique timide du sénat, et l'ignorance dans laquelle les paysans étoient encore du soulèvement de Gênes, le maréchal Botta y auroit laissé ses troupes, et sa liberté, ou sa vie.

Parme, Juin 14.]-Vers l'an 1747 des ouvriers que travailloient à Villora dans les montagnes du Parmesan, déterrèrent une grande table de bronze. On continua à faire des recherches, et peu à peu l'on parvint à découvrir les ruines d'une ville qui ne peut-être que l'ancienne Veleia, située dans ces quartiers, et qui doit avoir été écrasée sous la chûte d'une montagne. Ces décombres se trouvoient quelquefois à fleur de terre, et quelquefois à une assez grande profondeur. Je ne pense pas qu'on ait trouvé de maison complette, ni même des vestiges d'aucun édifice public, quoique Veleia ait du en avoir, quand ce ne seroit que des temples. Mais sur la situation des murs, l'on a dressé une espèce de carte Veleia, qui paroît avoir été grande. On y a trouvé beaucoup de statues, de lampes, et d'autres antiquités. Le duc y entretient toujours un directeur des travaux, avec une quarantaine d'ouvriers, et à mesure qu'on a épuisé un endroit, on le comble de terre. tout ce que j'en ai pu apprendre, graces à un mauvais air de mystère que la cour affecte d'y mettre. Elle compte un jour, quand on aura tout trouvé, de rendre compte au public de ses découvertes, et veut être la première à la rendre. On vous permit à peine de regarder attentivement, et jamais de rien copier.

[TRANSLATION.]

Voilà

Turin, May 10, 1764.]-We have been presented to the princesses and the duke of Chablais, being all of the royal family whom we wished to see. There are three prinresses, who have much the air of never changing their condition. The eldest, the princess of Savoy, has a small

an enchanted palace, a work of the fairies in the midst of a lake encompassed with mountains, and far re

round face, which may have been pretty. Louisa and Felicia are somewhat pale and thin, but are deemed the best girls in the world. The duke of Chablais is tall, well-made, and a little swarthy: he has not so forbidding an air as the duke of Savoy; and notwithstanding his great youth, and the constraint in which he is held, he appears more free and more graceful. He is the favourite of his father, who is as lavish in regard to him as niggardly to the poor duke of Savoy, who is obliged to raise on his allowance, and on the fortune of his wife, the sums which he bestows in works of charity and generosity, and, above all, upon officers of the army.

Turin, May 11, 1764.]—I must say two words regarding Turin, and the sovereign who reigns there. When we regard the slow and successive accessions of the House of Savoy during eight hundred years, it must be admitted that its grandeur has been rather the work of prudence than of fortune. It supports itself in the same spirit as it has been created by wisdom, order, and economy. With the worst portion of the Alps, a plain fertile but very contracted, and a miserable island, which annually produces-shall I say? or costs?-him 100,000 livres, the king of Sardinia has obtained a place among the powers of Europe. He possesses strong places, an army which he has extended to 50,000 men, and a numerous and brilliant court. In every department a spirit of activity is visible, regulated by an order which seeks both to make the most of advantageous circumstances, and to create them. Science, arts, buildings, manufactures, all are attended to; even navigation is not neglected. The king intends to make a fine port of Nice, and has invited an English captain, Atkins, to employ himself in his growing marine, which at present consists only of a vessel of 50 guns, and a frigate of thirty. Both of them are Spanish prizes purchased from the English. The frigate is the famous Hermione.

Genoa, May 22, 1764.]-We arrived at Genoa at halfpast eight in the morning. Our road was properly the bed of a great torrent; but the hills around offered us the pleasing spectacle of a number of country houses, very well formed, and ornamented with fine architecture and painting.

moved from the haunts of men. I was less amused by the marble palaces of Genoa than by the recent

The coup d'œil of Genoa and its port appeared to me to be very fine. After dinner we paid a visit to Mrs Mac Carlty, who is travelling with her son, and to Celesia, with whom I had become well acquainted in London. I found his wife only at home, who received me in a very friendly manner. I-am to dine there tomorrow, and to introduce Guise. Madame Celesia is very amiable; her character is gentle, and she possesses much wit and imagination. It seems to me, that increasing years and a knowledge of the world have cured her of the slightly romantic turn in which she formerly indulged. I have always felt for her the esteem and compassion which she merits, and have experienced for her a friendship which borders upon tenderness is the daughter of the poet Mallet, and was driven by the tyranny of her mother-in-law into the arms of M. Celesia, envoy from Genoa to England, who married her, and soon after took her to his own country. She says that she is very happy, but that she shall aways regret England.

She

May 23.1-We dined with the Celesias, who loaded me with proofs of attention, and even of friendship; for I deem all that is done for Guise as a favour to myself. I discoursed a good deal with Celesia upon the affairs of the country, and, above all, upon the insurrection at Genoa in 1746, and upon the revolts in Corsica. Here follow some of the circumstances which have been told me: 1st. When the people made this effort, which was worthy of the Romans, they formed a council, called the Assembly of the People, which continued for nearly a year: there were two independent departments in the state. The senate regulated as usual all foreign affairs, and abandoned to this assembly the domestic government. The latter remained charged with the guardianship of liberty, gave its orders under pain of death, and retained an executioner, who took his station on the steps of a church, near a gibbet, which enabled him promptly to obey orders. The most singular affair is, that the people, who manifested such a taste for the supreme authority, soon became disgusted with its own leaders, and by degrees allowed its assembly to decay, and restored the reins of government to the nobility without dispute and without conditions. 2dly. If the Genoese have

P

memorials of her deliverance (in December 1746) from the Austrian tyranny; and I took a military

irritated the Corsicans, they have since endeavoured to reconcile them. Four years ago they dispatched an illustrious deputation, furnished with full powers to grant the insurgents all which they might demand. This was fruitless. The independent spirits born during the revolt, and scarcely remembering that they had ever been subjects of Genoa, listened only to the violent counsels of Paoli, who alone knew how to govern this unruly people. This famous chief, whose manners are still a little ferocious, equals by his natural talents the great men of antiquity. M. Celesia can only compare him with Cromwell. Like Cromwell, ambition takes the precedence in his regard of riches, which he despises, and of pleasures, to which he has never been accustomed; like him, the perpetual dictator of a new-born republic, he knows how to govern it by the shadow of a senate, of which he is the master; and like him, he knows how to inspire his troops with a religious fanaticism, which renders them invincible. The curés of the island are very useful instruments to him; and his address in this respect is the more singular, as religion has neither been the motive nor the pretext for the revolt. The most considerate part of the Genoese senate is weary of a war which has cost great sacrifices and degradation. It preserves only the maritime places, the territory of which is often bounded by their lines of fortification; and it would abandon with plea sure the Corsicans to themselves, if it did not fear the king of Sardinia. It is certain that the court of Vienna has manifested a desire to acquire the island for the grand duke of Tuscany, ana possibly, but for the jealousy of France, might have obtained it.

June 3.]—I have passed the whole morning at home. Happy moments of repose, of which we feel not the value until we have lived in a crowd! I have purchased the History of the Revolutions of Geroa. The style is not bad, without being that of Vertot; and the order is clear, without being able. There are very few abbreviators to whom Velleius Paterculus has bequeathed his secret of exhibiting his subject in grand masses. But in a political history I ought to be anxious for the most accurate ideas of the constitution of Genoa, of its laws, and its manners.

survey of every scene of action within the inclosure of her double walls. My steps were detained at Parma

We dined with Celesia, who is always ill. At eight o'clock in the evening his father-in law presented us to the doge, Brignoletti. He is an old man, very fat, with not the most intellectual air in the world. He knows a little French, but he spoke to us chiefly in Italian. He received us politely, but with a mixture of dignity which was in tolerable accordance with his serenity. His serenityship receives 5000 livres, and expends at least 25,000, for the pleasure of residing in a wretched house, out of which he cannot move without the permission of the senate, of being clothed with scarlet from head to foot, and of being waited upon by twelve pages of sixty years of age, habited in Spanish liveries.

Castle of St John, June 12.]-We quitted Genoa early in the morning. We were anxious to reach Plaisance; but the bad roads, and the chicanery which awaited us at every stage, obliged us to put up at nine o'clock at the castle of St John, a small town in the territory of Plaisance, two stages from the capital, and eleven and a half from Genoa. I am not aware of anything more disagreeable and more incommodious than the passage of the Bouquette, and indeed of all the road from Genoa to Novi, where the plain of Lombardy commences. The king of Sardinia, by his unremitted attention to profit by the most trifling acquisitions, has finally reduced the Genoese to the simple possession of their naked and sterile mountains, from which even this people, industrious as they are, can scarcely derive the least advantage. In passing the Bouquette I made myself acquainted with this narrow defile, bordered with precipices and commanded by steep rocks. Notwithstanding the political timidity of the senate, and the ignorance of the peasantry of the rising in Genoa, I have been at no loss to comprehend how marshal Botta might have lost there his troops, his liberty, or his life.

Parma, June 14.]—About the year 1747 some workmen, who laboured in the mountains of the Parmesan, dug up a large table of bronze. They pursued their researches, and by degrees succeeded in discovering the remains of a town which could be no other than the ancient Veleia, situate in this quarter, which had been overwhelmed by the fall