We set out then for Ferrara, in our kind friend’s post-chaise; that is, my maid and I did: our good-natured gentlemen creeping slowly after in the broken coach; and how ended this project for insuring safety? Why in the chaise losing its hind wheel, and in our return to the carriage we had quitted. But it is for ever so, I think;—the sick folks live always, and the well ones die.

We took turn therefore and left our friends; but could not forbear a visit to Cento, where I wished much to see what Guercino had done for the ornament of his native place, and was amply repaid my pains by the sight of one picture, which, for its immediate power over the mind, at least over mine, has no equal even in Palazzo Zampieri. It is a scene highly touching. The appearance of our Saviour to his Mother after his resurrection. The dignity, the divinity of the Christ! the terror-checked transport visible in the parent Saint, whose expressive countenance and pathetic attitude display fervent adoration, maternal tenderness, and meek humility at once! How often have I said, this is the finest picture we have seen yet! when looking on the Caraccis and their school. I will say no more, the painter’s art can go no further than this. My partial preference of Guercino to any thing and to every thing, shall not however bribe me to suppress my grief and indignation at his strange method of commemorating his own name over the altar where he was baptised, which shocks every protestant traveller by its profaneness, while the Romanists admire his invention, and applaud his piety. Guercino then, so called because he was the little one-eyed man, had a fancy to represent his real appellation of John Francis Barbieri in the church; and took this mode as an ingenious one, painting St. John upon the right hand, St. Francis on the left, as two large full-length figures, and God the Father in the middle with a long beard for Barbieri.

This is a mixture of Abel Drugger’s contrivance in the Alchymist, and the infantine folly of three babies I once knew in England, children of a nobleman, who were severely whipt by their governess for playing at Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, sitting upon three chairs, with solemn countenances, in order to impress their tender fancies with a representation of what the good governess innocently and laudably had told them about the mysterious and incomprehensible Trinity. Let me add, that the eldest of these babies was not six years old, and the youngest but four, when they were caught in the blasphemous folly. Our Italians seem to be got very little further at forty.

Padua appears cleaner and prettier than it did last year; but so many things contribute to make me love it better, that it is no wonder one is prejudiced in its favour. It was so difficult to get safe hither, the roads being very bad, the people were so kind when we were here last, and the very inn-keeper and his assistants seemed so obligingly rejoiced to see us again, that I felt my heart quite expand at entering the Aquila d’oro, where we were soon rejoined by Mr. and Mrs. Greatheed, with whom we had parted in the Romagna, when they took the Perugia road, instead of returning by Bologna, a place they had seen before. Had we come three days sooner we might have seen the transit of Mercury from Abate Toaldo’s observatory; but our own transit took up all our thoughts, and it is a very great mercy that we are come safe at last. I think it was as much as four bulls and six horses could do to drag us into Rovigo.

say the Venetians: and round this town where the heat is indeed prodigious, they get the best vipers for the Venice treacle, I am told. Here are quantities of curious plants to be seen blooming now in the botanical garden, and our kind professor told me I need not languish so for horse chesnuts; for they would all be in flower as we returned up the Brenta from Venice. “They are all in flower now, Sir,” said I, “in my own grounds, eight miles from London: but our English oaks are not half so forward as yours are.” He recollected the aphorism so much a favourite with our country folks; how a British heart ought not to dilate with the early sunshine of prosperity, or droop at the first blasts of adverse fortune, as the British oak refuses to put out his leaves at summer’s early felicitations, and scorns to drop them at winter’s first rude shake.

Well! I have once more walked over St. Antony’s church, and examined the bas-reliefs that adorn his shrine; but their effect has ceased. Whoever has spent some time in the MusÆum Clementinum is callous to the wonders which sculpture can perform.

Has one not read in Ulloa’s travels, of a resting-place on the side of a Cordillera among the Andes, where the ascending traveller is regularly observed to put on additional clothing, while he who comes down the mountain feels so hot that he throws his clothes away? So it is with the shrine of St. Antonio di Padua, and one’s passion for the sculpture that adorns it: while Santa Giustina’s church regains her power over the mind, a power never missed by simplicity, while great effort has often small effect. But we are hastening to Venice, and shall leave our cares and our coach behind; superfluous as they both are, in a city which admits of neither.