Dulness, dear Queen, repeats the jest again.

We had another, and another just such a race for three or four evenings together, and they got an English cock-tailed nag, and set him to the business, as they said he was trained to it; but I don’t recollect his making a more brilliant figure than his painted and chalked neighbours of the Continent.

We will not be prejudiced, however; that the Florentines know how to manage horses is certain, if they would take the trouble.  Last night’s theatre exhibited a proof of skill, which might shame Astley and all his rivals.  Count Pazzi having been prevailed on to lend his four beautiful chesnut favourites from his own carriage to draw a pageant upon the stage, I saw them yesterday evening harnessed all abreast, their own master in a dancer’s habit I was told, guiding them himself, and personating the Cid, which was the name of the ballet, if I remember right, making his horses go clear round the stage, and turning at the lamps of the orchestra with such dexterity, docility, and grace, that they seemed rather to enjoy than feel disturbance at the deafening noise of instruments, the repeated bursts of applause, and hollow sound of their own hoofs upon the boards of a theatre.  I had no notion of such discipline, and thought the praises, though very loud, not ill bestowed:  as it is surely one of man’s earliest privileges to replenish the earth with animal life, and to subdue it.

I have, for my own part, generally speaking, little delight in the obstreperous clamours of these heroic pantomimes;—­their battles are so noisy, and the acclamations of the spectators so distressing to weak nerves, I dread an Italian theatre—­it distracts me.—­And always the same thing so, every and every night! how tedious it is!

This want of variety in the common pleasures of Italy though, and that surprising content with which a nation so sprightly looks on the same stuff, and laughs at the same joke for months and months together, is perhaps less despicable to a thinking mind, than the affectation of weariness and disgust, where probably it is not felt at all; and where a gay heart often lurks under a clouded countenance, put on to deceive spectators into a notion of his philosophy who wears it; and what is worse, who wears it chiefly as a mark of distinction cheaply obtained; for neither science, wit, nor courage are now found necessary to form a man of fashion, or the ton, to which may be said as justly as ever Mr. Pope affirmed it of silence,

    That routed reason finds her sure retreat in thee.

Affectation is certainly that faint and sickly weed which is the curse of cultivated,—­not naturally fertile and extensive countries; an insect that infests our forcing stoves and hot-house plants:  and as the naturalists tell us all animals may be bred down to a state very different from that in which they were originally placed; that carriers, and fantails, and croppers, are produced by early caging, and minutely attending to the common blue pigeon, flights of which cover the ploughed fields in distant provinces of England, and shew the rich and changeable plumage of their fine neck to the summer sun; so from the warm and generous Briton of ancient days may be produced, and happily bred down, the clay-cold coxcomb of St. James’s-street.