spirit still subsisted exactly; but that in order to prevent accidents arising from the disputants’ endeavours to overturn or circumvent each other, it was now sunk into a mere appearance of contest; for that all the chariots belonged to one man, who would doubtless be careful enough that his coachmen should not go to sparring at the hazard of their horses.  The farce was carried on to the end however, and the winner spread his velvet in triumph, and drove round the course to enjoy the acclamations and caresses of the crowd.

That St. John the Baptist’s birth-day should be celebrated by a horse or chariot race, appears to have little claim to the praise of propriety; but mankind seems agreed that there must be some excuse for merriment; and surely if any saint is to be venerated, he stands foremost whom Christ himself declared to be the greatest man ever born of a woman.

The old Romans had an institution in this month of games to Neptune Equester, as they called their Sea God, with no great appearance of good sense neither; but the horse he produced at the naming of Athens was the cause assigned—­these games are perhaps half transmitted ones from those in the ancient mythology.

The evening concluded, and the night began with fire-works; the church, or duomo, as a cathedral is always called in Italy, was illuminated on the outside, and very beautiful, and very very magnificent was the appearance.  The reflection of the cupola’s lights in the river gave us back a faint image of what we had been admiring; and when I looked at them from my window, as we were retiring to rest; such, thought I, and fainter still are the images which can be given of a show in written or verbal description; yet my English friends shall not want an account of what I have seen; for Italy, at last, is only a fine well-known academy figure, from which we all sit down to make drawings according as the light falls; and our seat affords opportunity.  Every man sees that, and indeed most things, with the eyes of his then present humour, and begins describing away so as to convey a dignified or despicable idea of the object in question, just as his disposition led him to interpret its appearance.

Readers now are grown wiser, however, than very much to mind us:  they want no further telling that one traveller was in pain, and one in love when the tour of Italy was made by them; and so they pick out their intelligence accordingly, from various books, written like two letters in the Tatler, giving an account of a rejoicing night; one endeavouring to excite majestic ideas, the other ludicrous ones of the very same thing.

Well ’tis true enough, however, and has been often enough laughed at, that the Italian horses run without riders, and scamper down a long street with untrimmed heels, hundreds of people hooking them along, as naughty boys do a poor dog, that has a bone tied to his tail in England.  This diversion was too good to end with the day.