of men of merit.  M. le Blond, de St. Cyr, Carrio Altuna, and a Forlinian gentleman, whose name I am very sorry to have forgotten, and whom I never call to my recollection without emotion:  he was the man of all I ever knew whose heart most resembled my own.  We were connected with two or three Englishmen of great wit and information, and, like ourselves, passionately fond of music.  All these gentlemen had their wives, female friends, or mistresses:  the latter were most of them women of talents, at whose apartments there were balls and concerts.  There was but little play; a lively turn, talents, and the theatres rendered this amusement incipid.  Play is the resource of none but men whose time hangs heavy on their hands.  I had brought with me from Paris the prejudice of that city against Italian music; but I had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice cannot withstand.  I soon contracted that passion for Italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence.  In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was, and I soon became so fond of the opera that, tired of babbling, eating, and playing in the boxes when I wished to listen, I frequently withdrew from the company to another part of the theater.  There, quite alone, shut up in my box, I abandoned myself, notwithstanding the length of the representation, to the pleasure of enjoying it at ease unto the conclusion.  One evening at the theatre of Saint Chrysostom, I fell into a more profound sleep than I should have done in my bed.  The loud and brilliant airs did not disturb my repose.  But who can explain the delicious sensations given me by the soft harmony of the angelic music, by which I was charmed from sleep; what an awaking! what ravishment! what ecstasy, when at the same instant I opened my ears and eyes!  My first idea was to believe I was in paradise.  The ravishing air, which I still recollect and shall never forget, began with these words: 

                         Conservami la bella,
                         Che si m’accende il cor.

I was desirous of having it; I had and kept it for a time; but it was not the same thing upon paper as in my head.  The notes were the same but the thing was different.  This divine composition can never be executed but in my mind, in the same manner as it was the evening on which it woke me from sleep.

A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the ‘scuole’.  The ‘scuole’ are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister.  Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank.  Every Sunday at the church of each of the four ‘scuole’, during vespers, motettos