good-natured person will grudge the tedium and fatigue which he suffered on the occasion. I ought to have told you, that the Advocate’s reasoning was all in vain; the Devil lost his cause, without the possibility of appeal. The Saint’s claim being confirmed, he was admitted into all the privileges of beatification; the Convent defraying the expence of the process. As we returned, Mr. R——y asked, if I recollected the Saint’s name. I said, I did not. “We must inform ourselves,” said he; “for when I meet him above, I shall certainly claim some merit with him, from having done penance at his beatification[1].” [1] I have been since informed, this new Saint is called St. Buonavantura; he was by birth a Neapolitan. LETTER XLIII. Rome. Travellers are too apt to form hasty, and, for the most part, unfavourable opinions of national characters. Finding the customs and sentiments of the inhabitants of the foreign countries through which they pass, very different from their own, they are ready to consider them as erroneous, and conclude, that those who act and think in a manner so opposite to themselves, must be either knaves, fools, or both. In such hasty decisions they are often confirmed by the partial representations of a few of their own countrymen, or of other foreigners who are established in some profession in those countries, and who have an interest in giving bad impressions of the people among whom they reside.