You are too well apprised of the veneration I have always entertained for this ingenious preacher, to doubt that I immediately repaired to his shrine and offered up my little orisons before it. Mine was a disturbed spirit, and required all the balm of St. Anthony’s kindness to appease it. Perhaps you will say I had better gone to bed, and applied myself to my sleepy friend, the pagan divinity. ’Tis probable that you are in the right; but I could not retire to rest without venting some portion of effervescence in sighs and supplications. The nave was filled with decrepit women and feeble children, kneeling by baskets of vegetables and other provisions; which, by good Anthony’s interposition, they hoped to sell advantageously in the course of the day. Beyond these, nearer the choir, and in a gloomier part of the edifice, knelt a row of rueful penitents, smiting their breasts, and lifting their eyes to heaven. Further on, in front of the dark recess, where the sacred relics are deposited, a few desperate, melancholy sinners lay prostrate. To these I joined myself, and fell down on the steps before the shrine. The sunbeams had not yet penetrated into this religious quarter; and the only light it received proceeded from the golden lamps, which hang in clusters round the sanctuary. A lofty altar, decked with superstitious prodigality, conceals the holy pile from profane glances. Those who are profoundly touched with its sanctity may approach, and walking round, look through the crevices of the tomb, and rub their noses against the identical bones of St. Anthony, which, it is observed, exude a balsamic odour. But supposing a traveller ever so heretical, I would advise him by no means to neglect this pilgrimage; since every part of the recess he visits is decorated with the most exquisite sculptures. Sansovino and the best artists have vied with each other in carving the alto relievos of the arcade, which, for design and execution, would do honour to the sculptors of antiquity. Having observed these objects with much less exactness than they merited, and acted perhaps too capital a part amongst the devotees, I hastened to the inn, luckily hard by, and one of the best I am acquainted with. Here I soon fell asleep in defiance of sunshine. ’Tis true my slumbers were not a little agitated. St. Anthony had been deaf to my prayer, and I still found myself a frail, infatuated mortal.