_September_ 13_th_.—Having but a moment or two at liberty, I hurried early in the morning to the palace, and entered an elegant Ionic court, with arcades of the whitest stone, through which I caught peeps of a clear blue sky and groves of cypresses. Some few good paintings still adorn the apartments, but the best part of the collection has been disposed of, for a hundred thousand sequins, amongst which was that inestimable picture, the Notte of Corregio. An excellent copy remained and convinced me the original was not undeservedly celebrated. None but the pencil of Corregio ever designed such graceful angels, nor imagined such a pearly dawn to cast around them. Ten thousand times, I dare say, has the subject of the Nativity been treated, and as many painters have failed in rendering it so pleasing. The break of day, the first smiles of the celestial infant, and the truth, the simplicity of every countenance, cannot be too warmly admired. In the other rooms, no picture gave me more pleasure than Jacob’s Vision by Domenico Feti. I gazed several minutes at the grand confusion of clouds and seraphim descending around the patriarch, and wished for a similar dream. Having spent the little time I had remaining in contemplating this object, I hastened from the palace and left Modena. [Picture: Bologna] We traversed a champagne country in our way to Bologna, whose richness and fertility increased in proportion as we drew near that celebrated mart of lap-dogs and sausages. A chain of hills commands the city, variegated with green inclosures and villas innumerable, almost every one of which has its grove of chestnuts and cypresses. On the highest acclivity of this range appears the magnificent convent of Madonna del Monte, embosomed in wood, and joined to the town by a corridor a league in length. This vast portico, ascending the steeps and winding amongst the thickets, sometimes concealed and sometimes visible, produces an effect wonderfully grand and singular. I longed to have mounted the height by so extraordinary a passage; and hope on some future day to be better acquainted with Saint Maria del Monte. At present I thought of little else, to say truth, but what I had seen at Fiesso; and what I was to hear at Lucca. The anxiety inspired by the one, and impatience by the other, rendered me shamefully insensible to the merits of Bologna (where I passed near two hours), and of which I can add nothing but that it is very much out of humour, an earthquake and Cardinal Buoncompagni having disarranged both land and people. For half-a-year the ground continued trembling; and for these last months, the legate and senators have grumbled and scratched incessantly; so that, between natural and political commotions, the Bolognese must have passed an agreeable summer.