You ask me what I think of the Italians, and reproach me with forgetting that there are inhabitants in the palaces I describe, and worshippers in the churches. The buildings are always before me, but what means have I, while thus hastily rambling from place to place, of entering into the character of the people? Yet not to appear rebellious to your authority, I will give you such a sketch as I can, but I fear it will be like those half dozen strokes which a smatterer in drawing sometimes calls a view from nature, but which nobody can understand but himself. In the first place the character of the people in the various states in Italy is considerably different. The Milanese is not like the inhabitant of Venice, nor is either like the Tuscan. The Tuscan peasantry are among the best of the class in Europe. They are cleanly in their houses and persons; they might not perhaps be considered so in Flanders, but they certainly must in Italy; civil and courteous to strangers, and I believe just and honest in their dealings: and add to this, they have a very remarkable felicity of expression in their beautiful language, though they abuse it a little in the pronunciation. They seem to hit naturally upon the very best words possible, and their grammar is almost always correct. The inhabitants of Perugia and Assisi partake with them in their civility and appearance of kindness towards strangers; but this is not the general character of the Roman states, where they are reserved, and sometimes almost sullen, especially in the Campagna. I can fancy that I see in the Romans traces of their ancient character, but perhaps with more of their ferocity under the emperors, and during the middle ages, than of the independence of their early history. Yet there seems to be something of that also. Their ferocity will give way to instruction, and a better religion, if that be permitted them: it is perhaps of all others the quality most unfavourable to liberty. If it had shown itself in the secession to Mons Sacer, the republic must have been destroyed, and Rome could have risen no more. The Roman is proud; the Tuscan is vain; so is the Neapolitan, but in a very different way; the latter is the French vanity exaggerated; the former, that of the Welsh rendered more reasonable; but in all these varieties, I think you rate the Italian character far too low. The germ of many excellences is there; nay, they are half-developed, but an oppressive religion, and a depressive government, hinder their expansion.