paternal authority that fathers used to exercise over their families in England before commerce had run her levelling plough over all ranks, and annihilated even the name of subordination.  If he hear of any person living long in Florence without being able to give a good account of his business there, the Duke warns him to go away; and if he loiter after such warning given, sends him out.  Does any nobleman shine in pompous equipage or splendid table; the Grand Duke enquires soon into his pretensions, and scruples not to give personal advice, and add grave reproofs with regard to the management of each individual’s private affairs, the establishment of their sons, marriage of their sisters, &c.  When they appeared to complain of this behaviour to me, I know not, replied I, what to answer:  one has always read and heard that the Sovereigns ought to behave in despotic governments like the fathers of their family:  and the Archbishop of Cambray inculcates no other conduct than this, when advising his pupil, heir to the crown of France.  “Yes, Madam,” replied one of my auditors, with an acuteness truly Italian; “but this Prince is our father-in-law.”  The truth is, much of an English traveller’s pleasure is taken off at Florence by the incessant complaints of a government he does not understand, and of oppressions he cannot remedy.  Tis so dull to hear people lament the want of liberty, to which I question whether they have any pretensions; and without ever knowing whether it is the tyranny or the tyrant they complain of.  Tedious however and most uninteresting are their accounts of grievances, which a subject of Great Britain has much ado to comprehend, and more to pity; as they are now all heart-broken, because they must say their prayers in their own language and not in Latin, which, how it can be construed into misfortune, a Tuscan alone can tell.

Lord Corke has given us many pleasing anecdotes of those who were formerly Princes in this land.  Had they a sovereign of the old Medici family, they would go to bed when he bid them quietly enough I believe, and say their prayers in what language he would have them:  ’tis in our parliamentary phrase, the men, not the measures that offend them; and while they pretend to whine as if despotism displeased them, they detest every republican state, feel envy towards Venice, and contempt for Lucca.

I would rather talk of their gallery than their government:  and surely nothing made by man ever so completely answered a raised expectation, as the apparent contest between Titian’s recumbent beauty, glowing with colour and animated by the warmest expression, and the Greek statue of symmetrical perfection and fineness of form inimitable, where sculpture supplies all that fancy can desire, and all that imagination can suggest.  These two models of excellence seem placed near each other, at once to mock all human praise, and defy all future imitation.  The listening slave appears