Our mornings are generally spent in visiting the antiquities, and the paintings in the palaces. On those occasions we are accompanied by Mr. Byres, a gentleman of probity, knowledge, and real taste. We generally pass two or three hours every evening at the conversazionis; I speak in the plural number, for we are sometimes at several in the same evening. It frequently happens, that three or four, or more, of the nobility, have these assemblies at the same time; and almost all the company of a certain rank in Rome make it a point, if they go to any, to go to all; so that, although there is a great deal of bustle, and a continual change of place, there is scarcely any change of company, or any variation in the amusement, except what the change of place occasions: but this circumstance alone is often found an useful accomplice in the murder of a tedious evening; for when the company find no great amusement in one place, they fly to another, in hopes they may be better entertained. These hopes are generally disappointed; but that does not prevent them from trying a third, and a fourth; and although to whatever length the experiment is pushed, it always terminates in new disappointments, yet, at last, the evening is dispatched; and, without this locomotive resource, I have seen people in danger of dispatching themselves. This bustle, and running about after objects which give no permanent satisfaction, and without fully knowing whence we came, or whither we are going, you’ll say, is a mighty silly business. It is so;—and, after all the swelling importance that some people assume, Pray what is human life?