instead of them just so many bottles of port wine are brought up; for they think that that is the best way to replace the absence of the fair sex. I say the 'fair' sex, for the English women deserve that name. They are fair, slender creatures. Only the excessive space between the nose and the mouth, which is found in them as frequently as in the men, has often spoiled for me in England the most beautiful faces. This declination from the type of beauty acts upon me still more fatally when I see the English here in Italy, where their sparingly chiselled noses, and the broad space of flesh that stretches from there to the mouth, forms so much the more uncouth contrast with the faces of the Italians, whose features have a more antique regularity, and whose noses, either curved in the Roman way or inclined in the Grecian, degenerate into too great a length. Very correct is the observation of a German traveller that the English, when among the Italians, all look like statues with the points of their noses broken off. Yes, when one meets the English in a foreign land, the contrast brings out their deficiencies distinctly. They are the gods of _ennui_, who travel through all lands at post haste in shining, lacquered coaches, and leave everywhere a grey, dark cloud of mournfulness behind them. Their curiosity without interest, their dressed-up awkwardness, their insolent timidity, their angular egotism, and their empty joy at all melancholy objects, aid in this impression. In the last three weeks an Englishman has been visible every day on the Piazza del Gran Duca, gazing for an hour at a time at a quack sitting on a horse who draws people's teeth. Perhaps this performance compensates the noble son of Albion for the loss of the executions of his own dear native land. For after boxing and cock-fights, there is no more delightful sight for a Briton than the agony of some poor devil who has stolen a sheep, or imitated somebody's handwriting, and is exhibited for an hour in front of the Old Bailey before he is thrown into eternity. It is no exaggeration to say that forgery and the theft of a sheep in that detestable and barbarous land are punished in the same way as the most awful crimes, as parricide and incest.[12] I, myself, led by a sad chance, saw a man hanged for stealing a sheep, and after that I lost all pleasure in roast mutton; the fat reminded me of the poor culprit's white cap. Near him an Irishman was hanged for forging the signature of a rich banker; I still see poor Paddy's death agony; he could not understand at the assizes why he should be so hardly punished for imitating a signature when he would allow any human being to imitate his own! And these people talk constantly of Christianity, and never miss church on Sunday, and flood the whole world with Bibles.