conduct of the great. He thought that the commonalty of Italy had lost the tact by which the good and evil of actions are discriminated; and that, whatever was good in their disposition, was constitutional, and unconnected with any principle of religion, or sense of right. In the Papal states, this appeared to be particularly the case. All the creative powers of the mind seemed there to be extinct. The country was covered with ruins, and the human character was in ashes. Sometimes, indeed, a few embers of intellect were seen among the clergy; but the brightness of their scintillation was owing to the blackness of death with which they were contrasted. The splendour of the nobility struck him only as a more conspicuous poverty than the beggary of the common people; and the perfect contempt with which they treated the feelings of their dependants, seemed to him scarcely less despicable than the apathy with which it was endured. The innumerable examples of the effects of this moral paralysis to which he was a witness on his arrival in Rome, filled him for some time with indescribable anxiety, and all his veneration for the Roman majesty was lost in reflections on the offences which mankind may be brought to commit on one another. But at Genoa, Leghorn, and Venice, the Italians were seen to less disadvantage. Commerce, by diffusring opulence, and interweaving the interests of all classes, preserved in those cities some community of feeling, which was manifested in an interchange of respect and consideration between the higher and the lower orders; and Lucca he thought afforded a perfect exception to the general degeneracy of the country. The inhabitants of that little republic presented the finest view of human nature that he had ever witnessed. With the manliness of the British character they appeared to blend the suavity of the Italian manners; and their private morals were not inferior to the celebrity of their public virtues. So true it is, that man, under the police and vigilance of despotism, becomes more and more vicious; while, in proportion to the extension of his freedom, is the vigour of his private virtue. When deprived of the right of exercising his own judgment, he feels, as it were, his moral responsibility at an end, and naturally blames the system by which he is oppressed, for the crimes which his own unresisted passions instigate him to commit. To an Englishman the remembrance of a journey in Italy is however often more delightful than that of any other country, for no where else is his arrogance more patiently endured, his eccentricities more humourously indulged, nor the generosity of his character more publicly acknowledged.