for suppers to their box, and entertain a knot of friends there with infinite convenience and splendour.  A silk curtain, the colour of your hangings, defends the closet from intrusive eyes, if you think proper to drop it; and when drawn up, gives gaiety and show to the general appearance of the whole:  while across the corridor leading to these boxes, another small chamber, numbered like that it belongs to, is appropriated to the use of your servants, and furnished with every conveniency to make chocolate, serve lemonade, &c.

Can one wonder at the contempt shewn by foreigners when they see English women of fashion squeezed into holes lined with dirty torn red paper, and the walls of it covered with a wretched crimson fluff?  Well! but this theatre is built in place of a church founded by the famous Beatrice de Scala, in consequence of a vow she made to erect one if God would be pleased to send her a son.  The church was pulled down and the playhouse erected.  The Arch-duke lost a son that year; and the pious folks cried, “A judgment!” but nobody minded them, I believe; many, however, that are scrupulous will not go.  Meantime it is a beautiful theatre to be sure; the finest fabric raised in modern days, I do believe, for the purposes of entertainment; but we must not be partial.  While London has twelve capital rooms for the professed amusement of the Public, Milan has but one; there is in it, however, a ridotto chamber for cards, of a noble size, where some little gaming goes on in carnival time; but though the inhabitants complain of the enormities committed there, I suppose more money is lost and won at one club in St. James’s street during a week, than here at Milan in the whole winter.

Every nation complains of the wickedness of its own inhabitants, and considers them as the worst people in the world, till they have seen others no better; and then, like individuals with their private sorrows, they find change produces no alleviation.  The Mount of Miseries, in the Spectator, where all the people change with their neighbours, lay down an undutiful son, and carry away with them a hump-back, or whatever had been the source of disquiet to another, whom he had blamed for bearing so ill a misfortune thought trifling till he took it on himself, is an admirably well constructed fable, and is applicable to public as well as private complaints.

A gentleman who had long practised as a solicitor, and was retired from business, stored with a perfect knowledge of mankind so far as his experience could inform him, told me once, that whoever died before sixty years old, if he had made his own fortune, was likely to leave it according as friendship, gratitude, and public spirit dictated:  either to those who had served, or those who had pleased him; or, not unfrequently, to benefit some charity, set up some school, or the like:  “but let a man once turn sixty,” said he, “and his natural heirs are sure of him:”  for having