This town is at present quite full of strangers, who came to assist at the procession of Corpus Domini. The Duke of Parma, several Cardinals, and other persons of high distinction, besides a prodigious crowd of citizens, attended this great festival. The streets through which the Host was carried under a magnificent canopy, were adorned with tapestry, paintings, looking-glasses, and all the various kinds of finery which the inhabitants could produce. Many of the paintings seemed unsuitable to the occasion; they were on profane, and some of them on wanton subjects; and it appeared extraordinary to see the figures of Venus, Minerva, Apollo, Jupiter, and others of that abdicated family, arranged along the walls in honour of a triumph of the Corpus Christi. On our way to Milan we stopped a short time at Modena, the capital of the duchy of that name. The whole duchy is about fifty miles in length, and twenty-six in breadth; the town contains twenty thousand inhabitants; the streets are in general large, straight, and ornamented with porticoes. This city is surrounded by a fortification, and farther secured by a citadel; it was anciently rendered famous by the siege which Decimus Brutus sustained here against Marc Antony. We proceeded next to Parma, a beautiful town, considerably larger than Modena, and defended, like it, by a citadel and regular fortification. The streets are well built, broad, and regular. The town is divided unequally by the little river Parma, which loses itself in the Po, ten or twelve miles from this city. The theatre is the largest of any in Europe; and consequently a great deal larger than there is any occasion for. Every body has observed, that it is so favourable to the voice, that a whisper from the stage is heard all over this immense house; but nobody tells us on what circumstance in the construction this surprising effect depends. The Modenese was the native country of Correggio, but he passed most of his life at Parma. Several of the churches are ornamented by the pencil of that great artist, particularly the cupola of the cathedral; the painting of which has been so greatly admired for the grandeur of the design and the boldness of the fore-shortenings. It is now spoiled in such a manner, that its principal beauties are not easily distinguished.