The road from Padua hither is a vile one; one can scarcely make twenty miles a-day in any part of the Venetian state. Its senators, accustomed to water carriage, have little care for us who go by land. The Palanzuola way is worse however, and I am glad once more to see sweet Verona.
Petruchio and Catharine might easily have met with all the adventures related by Grumio on their journey thither, but when once arrived she should have been contented. This city is as lovely as ever, more so than it was last April twelvemonth, when the spring was sullen and backward; every hill now glows with the gay produce of summer, and every valley smiles with plenty expected or pleasure possessed. The antiquities however look less respectable than when I left them; no amphitheatre will do after the Roman ColossÆum, and our triumphal arch here looked so pitiful, I wondered what was come to it. So must it always happen to the performances of art, which we compare one against another, and find that as man made the best of them, so some man may in some moment make a better still: but the productions of nature are the works of God; we can only compare them with other things done by the same Almighty Master, whose power is equally discernible in all, from the fly’s antennÆ to the elephant’s proboscis. Bozza’s collection gave birth to this last sentence; the farther one goes the more astonishing grows his musÆum, the neglect of which is sure no credit to the present age. I find his cabinet much fuller than I left it, and adorned with many new specimens from the southern seas, besides flying-fish innumerable, beautifully preserved, and one predaceous creature caught in the very act of gorging his prey, a proof of their destruction being instant as that of the dwellers in Pompeia, who had their dinners dished when the eruption overwhelmed them.
We took leave of our learned friends here with concern, but hope to see them again, and tread the stucco floors so prettily mottled and variegated, they look like the cold mock turtle soup exactly, which London pastry-cooks keep in their shops, ready for immediate use.
What an odd thing is custom! here is weather to fry one in, yet after exercise, and in a state of the most violent perspiration, no consequences follow the use of iced beverages, except the sense of pleasure resulting from them at the moment. Should a Bath belle indulge in such luxury, after dancing down forty couple at Mr. Tyson’s ball, we should expect to hear next day of her surfeit at least, if not of her sudden death. Lying-in ladies take the same liberty with their constitutions, and say that no harm comes of it; and when I tell them how differently we manage in England, cry, “mi pare che dev’essere schiavitÙ grande in quel paese della benedetta libertÀ[37].” Fine muslin linen nicely got up is however, say they, one of the things to be produced only in Great Britain, and much do our Italian ladies admire it, though they look very charmingly with much less trouble taken. I lent one lady at some place, I remember, my maid, to shew her, as she so much wished it, how the operation of clear-starching was performed; but as soon as it began, she laughed at the superfluous fatigue, as she called it; and her servants crossed themselves in every corner of the room, with wonder that such niceties should be required.—Well they might! for I caught a great tall fellow ironing his lady’s best neck-handkerchief with the warming-pan here at Padua very quietly; and she was a woman of quality too, and looked as lovely, when the toilette was once performed, as if much more attention had been bestowed upon it.
