"So Foscolo says he will get you a _seal cut_ better in Italy? he means a _throat_--that is the only thing they do dexterously. The Arts--all but Canova's, and Morghen's, and _Ovid_'s (I don't _mean poetry_),--are as low as need be: look at the seal which I gave to William Bankes, and own it. How came George Bankes to quote 'English Bards' in the House of Commons? All the world keep flinging that poem in my face. "Belzoni _is_ a grand traveller, and his English is very prettily broken. "As for news, the Barbarians are marching on Naples, and if they lose a single battle, all Italy will be up. It will be like the Spanish row, if they have any bottom. "'Letters opened?--to be sure they are, and that's the reason why I always put in my opinion of the German Austrian scoundrels. There is not an Italian who loathes them more than I do; and whatever I could do to scour Italy and the earth of their infamous oppression would be done _con amore_. "Yours," &c. * * * * * LETTER 413. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, February 21. 1821. "In the forty-fourth page, volume first, of Turner's Travels (which you lately sent me), it is stated that 'Lord Byron, when he expressed such confidence of its practicability, seems to have forgotten that Leander swam both ways, with and against the tide; whereas _he_ (Lord Byron) only performed the easiest part of the task by swimming with it from Europe to Asia.' I certainly could not have forgotten, what is known to every schoolboy, that Leander crossed in the night and returned towards the morning. My object was, to ascertain that the Hellespont could be crossed _at all_ by swimming, and in this Mr. Ekenhead and myself both succeeded, the one in an hour and ten minutes, and the other in one hour and five minutes. The _tide_ was _not_ in our favour; on the contrary, the great difficulty was to bear up against the current, which, so far from helping us into the Asiatic side, set us down right towards the Archipelago. Neither Mr. Ekenhead, myself, nor, I will venture to add, any person on board the frigate, from Captain Bathurst downwards, had any notion of a difference of the current on the Asiatic side, of which Mr. Turner speaks. I never heard of it till this moment, or I would have taken the other course. Lieutenant Ekenhead's sole motive, and mine also, for setting out from the European side was, that the little cape above Sestos was a more prominent starting place, and the frigate, which lay below, close under the Asiatic castle, formed a better point of view for us to swim towards; and, in fact, we landed immediately below it.