“The manners of Italy are so much altered since we were here last, the alteration is scarce credible.  They say it has been by the last war.  The French, being masters, introduced all their customs, which were eagerly embraced by the ladies, and I believe will never be laid aside; yet the different governments make different manners in every state.  You know, though the republic is not rich, here are many private families vastly so, and live at a great superfluous expense:  all the people of the first quality keep coaches as fine as the Speaker’s, and some of them two or three, though the streets are too narrow to use them in the town; but they take the air in them, and their chairs carry them to the gates.  The liveries are all plain:  gold or silver being forbidden to be worn within the walls, the habits are all obliged to be black, but they wear exceeding fine lace and linen; and in their country-houses, which are generally in the faubuurg, they dress very rich, and have extreme fine jewels.  Here is nothing cheap but houses.  A palace fit for a prince may be hired for fifty pounds per annum; I mean unfurnished.  All games of chance are strictly prohibited, and it seems to me the only law they do not try to evade:  they play at quadrille, piquet, &c., but not high.  Here are no regular public assemblies.  I have been visited by all of the first rank, and invited to several fine dinners, particularly to the wedding of one of the house of Spinola, where there were ninety-six sat down to table, and I think the entertainment one of the best I ever saw.  There was the night following a ball and supper for the same company, with the same profusion.  They tell me that all their great marriages are kept in the same public manner.  Nobody keeps more than two horses, all their journeys being post; the expense of them, including the coachman, is (I am told) fifty pounds per annum.  A chair is very near as much; I give eighteen francs a week for mine.  The senators can converse with no strangers during the time of their magistracy, which lasts two years.  The number of servants is regulated, and almost every lady has the same, which is two footmen, a gentleman-usher, and a page, who follows her chair.

Certainly the simple life appealed to Lady Mary, but much as she liked Geneva the cost of living irked her.  “Everything is as dear as it is at London,” she complained to her husband in November, 1741. “’Tis true, as all equipages are forbidden, that expense is entirely retrenched....  The way of living is absolutely the reverse of that in Italy.  Here is no show, and a great deal of eating; there is all the magnificence imaginable, and no dinners but on particular occasions; yet the difference of the prices renders the total expense very near equal....  The people here are very well to be liked, and this little republic has an air of the simplicity of old Rome in its earliest age.  The magistrates toil with their own hands, and their wives literally dress their dinners against their