No city in the world has less affinity with the country than Venice, and few can have more than Padua; for great part of the circuit within the walls is unbuilt, and the town in general so thinly inhabited, that grass is seen in many places in the interstices of the stones with which the streets are paved. The houses are built on porticoes, which, when the town was well inhabited, and in a flourishing condition, may have had a magnificent appearance; but, in its present state, they rather give it a greater air of melancholy and of gloom. The Franciscan church, dedicated to St. Antonio, the great patron of this city, was the place we were first led to by the Cicerone of our inn. The body of this holy person is inclosed in a sarcophagus, under an altar in the middle of the chapel, and is said to emit a very agreeable and refreshing flavour. Pious Catholics believe this to be the natural effluvia of the saint’s body; while Heretics assert, that the perfume (for a perfume there certainly is) proceeds from certain balsams rubbed on the marble every morning, before the votaries come to pay their devotions. I never presume to give an opinion on contested points of this kind; but I may be allowed to say, that if this sweet odour really proceeds from the holy Franciscan, he emits a very different smell from any of the brethren of that order whom I ever had an opportunity of approaching. The walls of this church are covered with votive offerings of ears, eyes, arms, legs, noses, and every part almost of the human body, in token of cures performed by this saint; for whatever part has been the seat of the disease, a representation of it is hung up in silver or gold, according to the gratitude and wealth of the patient.