With thee conversing I forget all time,
    All seasons, and their change—­all please alike.

For it is sure there are in this town many astonishing privations of all that are used to make other places delightful:  and as poor Omai the savage said, when about to return to Otaheite—­No horse there! no ass! no cow, no golden pippins, no dish of tea!—­Ah, missey!  I go without every thing—­I always so content there though.

It is really just so one lives at this lovely Venice:  one has heard of a horse being exhibited for a show there, and yesterday I watched the poor people paying a penny a piece for the sight of a stuffed one, and am more than persuaded of the truth of what I am told here, That numberless inhabitants live and die in this great capital, nor ever find out or think of enquiring how the milk brought from Terra Firma is originally produced.  When such fancies cross me I wish to exclaim, Ah, happy England! whence ignorance is banished by the diffusion of literature, and narrowness of notions is ridiculed even in the lowest class of life.  Candour must however confess, that while the possessor of a Northern coal-mine riots in that variety of adulation which talents deserve and riches contrive to obtain, those who labour in it are often natives of the dismal region; where many have been known to be born, and work, and die, without having ever seen the sun, or other light than such as a candle can bestow.  Let such dark recollections give place to more cheerful imagery.

We have just now been carried to see the so justly-renowned arsenal, and unluckily missed the ship-launch we went thither chiefly to see.  It is no great matter though! one comes to Italy to look at buildings, statues, pictures, people!  The ships and guns of England have been such as supported her greatness, established her dominion, and extended her commerce in such a manner as to excite the admiration and terror of Europe, whose kingdoms vainly as perfidiously combined with her own colonies against that power which they maintained, in spite of the united efforts of half the globe.  I shall hardly see finer ships and guns till I go home again, though the keeping all together on one island so—­that island walled in too completely with only a single door to come in and out at—­is a construction of peculiar happiness and convenience; while dock, armoury, rope-walk, all is contained in this space, exactly two miles round I think.

What pleased me best, besides the whole, which is best worth being pleased with, was the small arms:  there are so many Turkish instruments of destruction among them quite new to me, and the picture commemorating the cruel death of their noble gallant leader Bragadin, so inhumanly treated by the Saracens in 1571.  With infinite gratitude to his amiable descendant, who shewed me unmerited civility, dining with us often, and inviting us to his house, &c.  I leave this repository of the Republic’s stores with one observation, That however suspicious the Venetians are said to be, I found it much more easy for Englishmen to look over their docks, than for a foreigner to find his way into ours.