that no flame followed these wandering fires was not small, when I recollected the state of desiccation that nature suffered, and had done for some months.  My dislike of interrupting an agreeable conversation kept me long from enquiring into the cause of this appearance, which however I doubted not was electrick, till they told me it was the lucciola, or fire-fly; of which a very good account is given in twenty books, but I had forgotten them all.  As the Florence Miscellany has never been published, I will copy out what is said of it there, because the Abate Fontana was consulted when that description was given.

“This insect then differs from every other of the luminous tribe, because its light is by no means continual, but emitted by flashes, suddenly striking out as it flies; when crushed it leaves a lustre on the spot for a considerable time, from whence one may conclude its nature is phosphorick.”

    Oh vagrant insect, type of our short life,
    ’Tis thus we shine, and vanish from the view;
    For the cold season comes,
    And all our lustre’s o’er.

    MERRY’s Ode to Summer.

It is said I think, that no animal affords an acid except ants, which are therefore most quickly destroyed by lime, pot-ash, &c. or any strong alkali of course; yet acid must the lucciola be proved, or she can never be phosphorick surely; as upon its analysis that strangest of all compositions appears to be a union of violent acid with inflammable matter, whence it may be termed an animal sulphur, and is actually found to burn successfully under a common glass-bell; and to afford flowers too, which, by attracting the humidity of the air, become a liquor like oleum sulphuris per campanam[Footnote:  Oil of sulphur by the bell.].

The colour of the sky viewed, when one dares to look at it, through this pure atmosphere is particularly beautiful; of a much more brilliant and celestial blue I think, than it appeared from the tower of St. Mark’s Place, Venice.  Were I to affirm that the sea is of a more peculiar transparent brightness upon the coast of North Wales than elsewhere, it would seem prejudice perhaps, and yet is strictly true:  I am not less persuaded that the sky appears of a finer tint in Tuscany than any other country I have visited:—­Naples is however the vaunted climate, and that yet remains to be examined.

I have been shewed, at the horse-race, the theatre, &c. the unfortunate grandson of King James the Second.  He goes much into publick still, though old and sickly; gives the English arms and livery, and wears the garter, which he has likewise bestowed upon his natural daughter.  The Princess of Stoldberg, his consort, whom he always called Queen, has left him to end a life of disappointment and sorrow by himself, with the sad reflection, that even conjugal attachment, and of course domestic comfort, was denied to him, and fled—­in defiance of poetry and fiction—­fled with the crown, to its powerful and triumphant possessors.