French nobleman, whose name was Bouthillier da (sic) Rance, a man of pleasure and gallantry, which were converted into the deepest gloom of devotion, by the following incident.  His affairs obliged him to absent himself for some time, from a lady with whom he had lived in the most intimate and tender connections of successful love.  At his return to Paris, he proposed to surprise her agreeably; and, at the same time, to satisfy his own impatient desire of seeing her, by going directly, and without ceremony, to her apartment by a back stair, which he was well acquainted with.—­But think of the spectacle that presented itself to him at his entrance into the chamber that had so often been the scene of love’s highest raptures!  His mistress dead—­dead of the small-pox—­disfigured beyond expression—­a loathsome mass of putrified (sic) matter—­and the surgeon separating the head from the body, because the coffin had been made too short!  He stood for a moment motionless in amazement, and filled with horror—­and then retired from the world, shut himself up in the convent of La Trappe, where he passed the remainder of his days in the most cruel and disconsolate devotion.—­Let us quit this sad subject.

I MUST not forget to tell you, that before I came to this monastery, I went to see the burning mountains near Fierenzuola, of which the naturalists speak as a great curiosity.  The flame it sends forth is without smoke, and resembles brandy set on fire.  The ground about it is well cultivated, and the fire appears only in one spot where there is a cavity, whose circumference is small, but in it are several crevices whose depths are unknown.  It is remarkable, that when a piece of wood is thrown into this cavity, though it cannot pass through the crevices, yet it is consumed in a moment; and that though the ground about it be perfectly cold, yet if a stick be rubbed with any force against it, it emits a flame, which, however, is neither hot nor durable like that of the volcano.  If you desire a more circumstantial account of this phenomenon, and have made a sufficient progress in Italian, to read father Carazzi’s description of it, you need not be at a loss, for I have sent this description to Mr F——­, and you have only to ask it of him.  After observing the volcano, I Scrambled up all the neighbouring hills, partly on horse-back, partly on foot, but could find no vestige of fire in any of them; though common report would make one believe that they all contain volcanos.

I HOPE you have not taken it in your head to expect from me a description of the famous gallery, here, where I arrived on Thursday at noon; this would be requiring a volume instead of a letter; besides I have as yet seen but a part of this immense treasure, and I propose employing some weeks more to survey the whole.  You cannot imagine any situation more agreeable than Florence.  It lies in a fertile and smiling valley watered by the Arno, which runs through the city; and nothing can surpass the beauty