animals which can live at Venice, where, as I observed, scarcely any quadrupeds can be admitted, or would exist with any degree of comfort to themselves.  This creature has, however, by keeping his master company, I trust, obtained so perfect an ear and taste for music, that no one who sees his behaviour, can doubt for a moment of the pleasure he takes in hearing Mr. Bertoni play and sing:  for as soon as he sits down to the instrument, Columbo begins shaking his wings, perches on the piano-forte, and expresses the most indubitable emotions of delight.  If however he or any one else strike a note false, or make any kind of discord upon the keys, the dove never fails to shew evident tokens of anger and distress; and if teized too long, grows quite enraged; pecking the offender’s legs and fingers in such a manner, as to leave nothing less doubtful than the sincerity of his resentment.  Signora Cecilia Giuliani, a scholar of Bertoni’s, who has received some overtures from the London theatre lately, will, if she ever arrives there, bear testimony to the truth of an assertion very difficult to believe, and to which I should hardly myself give credit, were I not witness to it every morning that I chuse to call and confirm my own belief.  A friend present protested he should feel afraid to touch the harpsichord before so nice a critic; and though we all laughed at the assertion, Bertoni declared he never knew the bird’s judgment fail; and that he often kept him out of the room, for fear of his affronting of tormenting those who came to take musical instructions.  With regard to other actions of life, I saw nothing particular in the pigeon, but his tameness, and strong attachment to his master:  for though never winged, and only clipped a very little, he never seeks to range away from the house or quit his master’s service, any more than the dove of Anacreon: 

    While his better lot bestows
    Sweet repast and soft repose;
    And when feast and frolic tire,
    Drops asleep upon his lyre.

All the difficulty will be indeed for us other two-legged creatures to leave the sweet societies of charming Venice; but they begin to grow fatiguing now, as the weather increases in warmth.

I do think the Turkish sailor gave an admirable account of a carnival, when he told his Mahometan friends at his return, That those poor Christians were all disordered in their senses, and nearly in a state of actual madness, while he remained among them, till one day, on a sudden, they luckily found out a certain grey powder that cured such symptoms; and laying it on their heads one Wednesday morning, the wits of all the inhabitants were happily restored at a stroke:  the people grew sober, quiet, and composed; and went about their business just like other folks.  He meant the ashes strewed on the heads of all one meets in the streets through many a Catholic country; when all masquerading, money-making, &c. subside for forty days, and give, from the force of the contrast, a greater appearance of devotion and decorous behaviour in Venice, than almost any where else during Lent.