_13th._--Left Arona; crossed the Ticino and arrived very late at Milan. The heat in the plains of Lombardy in the summer is intense; the thermometer varied from 92 to 96 degrees Fahrenheit. The Litta family live with princely splendour. The Csse. Maxe, celebrated in the annals of _European_ gallantry, was very civil, and showed me all that was worthy of notice. Padre Pini, an old Barnabite monk, gave me many good specimens, especially of his Adularia, a species of felspar he has discovered. I went over to Pavia to see the celebrated Spallanzani:[18] he is the great friend of Bonnet of Geneva, and he is the man who has made some filthy experiments upon digestion. Pavia is a curious old town, formerly the capital of the Lombard Kings, and in more modern times the scene of the disaster of the French army, and the captivity of its monarch. Francis ye 1st here became prisoner to the unfeeling, politic Charles V. The Cathedral is a specimen of very early Gothic, misshapen and clumsy. The Po and Ticino join near the city. Great preparations among the emigrants of Coblentz for marching into France. _22nd June._--Left Milan for Dresden. We skirted Lodi, famous for its cheeses and deep sands. A violent thunderstorm came on at Pizzighettone, where I stopped; and notwithstanding abuse and threats I was resolved to stay and not risk my life and my child’s with hot horses near a deep river during a heavy storm. _23rd._--Got to Mantua. The waters of the Mincio being suffered to stagnate, the wells about Mantua are unwholesome and bad. The Palais du T. [_sic_] is a pretty villa belonging to the ancient Princes of Gonzaga. The walls are painted in fresco by _Giulio Romano_, the best of Raphael’s scholars: the subject represents the ‘Battle of the Giants.’ I looked around in vain for a beech tree under whose wide spreading branches a Tityrus was wont to recline and amuse his little lambkins with the soft notes of his pipe in the days of the Mantuan Bard. Tho’ Vergil was born, one might doubt much if he was bred, here; he seems to have described the pastoral manners of some happier soil of Italy. The party reached Verona on the 24th. ‘The town is handsome; the bridge over the Adige very fine. The Corso is very noble.’ They left again two days later, and at Ala entered the Tyrol.