About noon, we reached the first post in the Roman states, where we breakfasted at a miserable inn, Madame Frimont making her appearance soon after us. The day now turned out uncommonly fine, and we proceeded in good spirits; we were shortly after checked by the custom-house officers belonging to his holiness, whose scruples, however, were readily silenced by the sight of a paul from each of us. Shortly afterwards we were detained, to have our passports examined, at the village of Aquapendente, famous for being the birth-place of the great anatomist Fabricius. This detention mortified us exceedingly, as in the interim, Madame Frimont, of whom we had previously the start, passed without interruption, and thus got irretrievably a-head of us. This exemption our driver attributed to the military connexion of the lady, and I believe that, on the same score, I might have refused an examination of my passport; they had, however, the assurance to charge us a paul for inspecting them. The road now became very good, and enabled us to walk for a considerable distance; and the conversation of the party, who all spoke French, proved very agreeable. We met, however, with some unpleasant incidents on the way; amongst which I may name the mangled limbs of a fellow creature who had been executed, exposed on the road side. This unfortunate wretch had no doubt been a robber, perhaps a murderer, and a disgrace to human nature; but granting all this, it appears repugnant to Christian feeling, to exhibit so disgusting a spectacle to the purer part of the community. To check the progress of crime, it is doubtless necessary to inflict punishments, and to make the example more efficacious, to accomplish this before the public eye; but when the penalty has been paid, surely it would be preferable to withdraw the remains of mortality, and place them where they may unoffensively mingle with their parent dust, rather than to leave “What better to oblivion were resign’d, Still hung on high to poison half mankind.”