seen many people, he has likewise been disgusted by many; and though he does not love his relations better than he did, the discovery that others are but little superior to them in those excellencies he has sought about the world in vain for, he begins to enquire for his nephew’s little boy, whom as he never saw, never could have offended him; and if he does not break the chain of a favourite watch, or any other such boyish trick, the estate is his for ever, upon no principle but this in the testator.

So it is by those who travel a good deal; by what I have seen, every country has so much in it to be justly complained of, that most men finish by preferring their own.

That neither complaints nor rejoicings here at Milan, however, proceed from affectation, is a choice comfort:  the Lombards possess the skill to please you without feigning; and so artless are their manners, you cannot even suspect them of insincerity.  They have, perhaps for that very reason, few comedies, and fewer novels among them:  for the worst of every man’s character is already well known to the rest; but be his conduct what it will, the heart is commonly right enough—­il luon cuor Lombardo is famed throughout all Italy, and nothing can become proverbial without an excellent reason.  Little opportunity is therefore given to writers who carry the dark lanthorn of life into its deepest recesses—­unwind the hidden wickedness of a Maskwell or a Monkton, develope the folds of vice, and spy out the internal worthlessness of apparent virtue; which from these discerning eyes cannot be cloked even by that early-taught affectation which renders it a real ingenuity to discover, if in a highly polished capital a man or woman has or has not good parts or principles—­so completely are the first overlaid with literature, and the last perverted by refinement.

* * * * *

April 2, 1785.

The cold weather continues still, and we have heavy snows; but so admirable is the police of this well-regulated town, that when over-night it has fallen to the height of four feet, no very uncommon occurrence, no one can see in the morning that even a flake has been there, so completely do the poor and the prisoners rid us of it all, by throwing immense loads of it into a navigable canal that runs quite round the city, and carries every nuisance with it clearly away—­so that no inconveniencies can arise.

Italians seem to me to have no feeling of cold; they open the casements—­for windows we have none (now in winter), and cry, che bel freschetto![Footnote:  What a fresh breeze!] while I am starving outright.  If there is a flash of a few faggots in the chimney that just scorches one a little, no lady goes near it, but sits at the other end of a high-roofed room, the wind whistling round her ears, and her feet upon a perforated brass box, filled with wood embers, which the cavalier fervente pulls out from time to