when they called my maid sister, in good time—­pressing her hand with affectionate kindness, it melted me; though I feared from time to time there must be hypocrisy at bottom of such sugared words, till I caught a lady of condition yesterday turning to the window, and praying fervently for the girl’s conversion to christianity, all from a tender and pious emotion of her gentle heart:  as notwithstanding their caresses, no man is more firmly persuaded of a mathematical truth than they are of mine, and my maid’s living in a state of certain and eternal reprobation—­ma fanno veramente vergogna a noi altri[Footnote:  But they really shame even us.], say they, quite in the spirit of the old Romans, who thought all nations barbarous except their own.

A woman of quality, near whom I sate at the fine ball Bragadin made two nights ago in honour of this gay season, enquired how I had passed the morning.  I named several churches I had looked into, particularly that which they esteem beyond the rest as a favourite work of Palladio, and called the Redentore.  “You do very right,” says she, “to look at our churches, as you have none in England, I know—­but then you have so many other fine things—­such charming steel buttons for example;” pressing my hand to shew that she meant no offence; for, added she, chi pensa d’una maniera, chi pensa d’un altra[Footnote:  One person is of one mind you know, another of another.].

Here are many theatres, the worst infinitely superior to ours; the best, as far below those of Milan and Turin:  but then here are other diversions, and every one’s dependance for pleasure is not placed upon the opera.  They have now thrown up a sort of temporary wall of painted canvass, in an oval form, within St. Mark’s Place, profusely illuminated round the new-formed walk, which is covered in at top, and adorned with shops round the right hand side, with pillars to support the canopy; the lamps, &c. on the left hand.  This open Ranelagh, so suited to the climate, is exceedingly pleasing:—­here is room to sit, to chat, to saunter up and down, from two o’clock in the morning, when the opera ends, till a hot sun sends us all home to rest—­for late hours must be complied with at Venice, or you can have no diversion at all, as the earliest Casino belonging to your soberest friends has not a candle lighted in it till past midnight.

But I am called from my book to see the public library; not a large one I find, but ornamented with pieces of sculpture, whose eminence has not, I am sure, waited for my description:  the Jupiter and Leda particularly, said to be the work of Phidias, whose Ganymede in the same collection they tell us is equally excellent.  Having heard that Guarini’s manuscript of the Pastor Fido, written in his own hand, was safely kept at this place, I asked for it, and was entertained to see his numberless corrections and variations from the original thought, like those of Pope’s Homer