"To retrieve my lost reputation, I sat down to read Le Solitaire, and as I read, my amazement grew, and I did in 'gaping wonderment abound,' to think that fashion, like the insane root of old, had power to drive a whole city mad with nonsense; for such a tissue of abominable absurdities, bombast, and blasphemy, bad taste and bad language, was never surely indited by any madman, in or out of Bedlam: not Maturin himself, that king of fustian, '---- ever wrote or borrowed, Any horror half so horrid!' and this is the book which has turned the brains of half Paris, which has gone through fifteen editions in a few weeks, which not to admire is '_pitoyable_,' and not to have read '_quelque chose d'inouie_.'" Again, "This is the place to live in for the merry poor man, or the melancholy rich one; for those who have too much money, and those who have too little; for those who only wish like the Irishman, 'to live all the days of their life,'--_prendre en légère monnoie la somme des plaisirs_--but to the thinking, the feeling, the domestic man, who only exists, enjoys, suffers through his affections-- 'Who is retired as noontide dew, Or fountain in a noonday grove--' to such a one, Paris must be nothing better than a vast frippery shop, an ever varying galanty show, an eternal vanity fair, a vortex of folly, a pandemonium of vice." At Milan the fair invalid was induced to visit the Scala, where she saw the _Didone Abandonnato_, a ballet by Vigano. This piece was founded upon the loves of Dido and Eneas, and the celebrated cavern scene in the 4th book of Virgil was copied _almost_ to the life. A noble English family just arrived at Milan, was present at the performance, and the effect upon one of its members is thus described: "In the front of the box sat a beautiful girl, apparently not fifteen, with laughing lips and dimpled cheeks, the very personification of blooming, innocent, _English_ loveliness. I watched her, (I could not help it, when my interest was once awakened,) through the whole scene. I marked her increased agitation: I saw her cheeks flush, her eyes glisten, her bosom flutter, as if with sighs I could not overhear, till at length, overpowered with emotion, she turned away her head, and covered her eyes with her hand. Mothers!--English mothers! who bring your daughters abroad to finish their education--do ye well to expose them to scenes like these, and _force_ the young bud of early feeling in such a precious hotbed as this?--Can a finer finger on the piano,--a finer taste in painting, or any possible improvement in foreign arts, and foreign graces, compensate for one taint on that moral purity, which has ever been, (and may it ever be!) the boast, the charm of Englishwomen? But what have I to do with all this?--I came here to be amused and to forget:--not to moralize, or to criticise." The picture of Venice, "throned on her hundred isles," is vivid and beautiful.