reality; but they have made a great fool of him in the Opera, with his nonsense about Orestes. They should study history more.'

Did you say we should study history more?' I asked maliciously.

'O no-Signora--no,--these ignorant poets and opera people.'

'People who attend the Opera?' I persisted. 'No, Signora, these ignorant people who write the Operas, I meant.'

Why they seem to understand history well enough for the generality of people who attend Operas. For instance, I am sure I never knew till to-night that Pylades was a great Roman Philosopher.'

The little Marquis bowed with a self-satisfied air, and expressed his happiness that he could afford me any information.*

Yet notwithstanding these specimens of Italian fashionables, there are men-and noblemen too, at Milan, of very superior talent, information, and science, but they certainly were not in the Marche

sa's box.

We went to the theatre to see a play-a more unfashionable proceeding, if possible, in Milan, even than in London. The performance was much below mediocrity, and so were the dresses, decorations, scenes, and company-both on and off the stage.

The theatre of the Burattini, or Marionettes, afforded us infinitely more amusement. These jointed performers were well dressed puppets, who walked in and walked out, and went through all the

*This conversation is not fictitious.

gestures and motions of living persons, while their parts were mimicked behind the scenes-but so ingeniously, that it was at first difficult to believe these Burattini were not little men and women talking ; and the pieces they represented were extremely laughable. Certainly the best actors we saw at Milan were these wooden ones.

None of these elegant amusements, however, prevented us from going every evening to the Casino of the nobles, which consists of a very handsome suite of rooms, fitted up for company, cards, conversation, flirtation, and occasionally music and dancing. It is regularly frequented nightly by the Milan Nobility, both of the old and new class-between which there seems to exist all those amiable feelings of spite, disdain, jealousy, envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness,' which such distinctions, with such characters, might naturally be expected to engender.

6

Of the few ladies of the high nobility whom we knew here, it is not, perhaps, fair to speak at all,since it is impossible to speak very favourably;but such is their passion for dress, for admiration, gallantry, shew, expense, dissipation, and too often gambling--that I can only hope the rest who are away, may be better specimens of the fair Italians. One of the great pleasures of their lives is to drive up and down the Corso, after dinner, before the Opera, for an hour before sun-set; and they very often appear in their open carriages with their necks and arms completely exposed, as if sitting dressed at an evening party. To an English eye it has a most unpleasant air of boldness and immodesty, thus to exhibit their persons to the public gaze, in the open street. They generally wear bonnets, like the French women, both at the opera

and at dinner; and in the early morning their hair is in papillotes, and their dress and appearance completely in dishabille-not elegant, and rarely clean. The rage for English horses, English carriages, English dandyism, English jockeyship, and every thing English,-is so great here at present, that I wish they would imitate English habits of neatness and propriety in dress.

Thus, though they spend incredible sums of money upon their dress, they are not, after all, fit to be seen during one half of the day. They carry their passion for finery to the most extravagant height-and even mothers with grown-up families, nay grandmothers, vie with each other in this ruinous contest, and think it a disgrace to appear at a gala twice in the same dress. I know instances of women here, who have run into debts which they cannot pay, ruined their husbands and families, and even, if report say true, sacrificed their honour to indulge this infatuated vanity.

Certainly no traces now remain of that extraordinary piety, which, in an earlier age, prompted the Milanese ladies to contribute their jewels, and costly ornaments, and fine clothes, to build a church to the virgin. But the virgins themselves-I mean the images in the churches--are dressed as fine as hands can make them; like dolls-in stiff brocade gowns and coloured glass jewels.

I have been much edified with my pilgrimage of the churches. First we saw, at the church of St. Ambrose, the very identical gates which St. Ambrose himself shut in the face of Theodosius the Great, and refused him admittance, until he had expiated, by a public penance, the murder of the Thessalonians; nor was he admitted within them, till, prostrate in the dust, the humbled Monarch, at the fect

of the proud priest, before the assembled multitude, implored the pardon and absolution of his sins. Miraculous to relate, these gates were carved in wood in the ninth century, and the saint lived in the fourth. 6 But,' as the little man who shewed them to us said, 'nothing is impossible.'

Then I made a most marvellous discovery for myself, in the old church of St. Eustorgio, (the most ancient of Milan), of the tomb of the three Magi;-which I maintain was my own discovery, because I never heard of it before, and have been able to find no account of it, in any of the copious books of travels with which we are oppressed. And yet, such was my genius, that upon a huge urn of marble in that venerable church, I spied the inscription 'Sepulchrum Trium Magorum;' which, on inquiry among the literati, I find is well known among them as the tomb of the three kings-though the literati knew nothing more about them. But by industriously grubbing in the dust of antiquity, I have satisfactorily ascertained that the bodies of the three Kings were brought by St. Eustorgio himself out of Germany-(how they got to Germany the Saint alone knows, for even the antiquarians don't), in a car drawn by four oxen. But a tiger one night in the Black Forest, eat up cne of the oxen for his supper, and then, penitent for what he had done, put himself into harness instead of it-(I think the tiger should have been canonized.) He patiently helped the oxen and the saint to draw the three (dead) kings the whole way to this spot, when they suddenly grew refractory-and not one foot further could the tiger, the saint or the oxen, make these obstinate three kings go,-so a church was built over them. But, after all, the defunct Magi capriciously betook themselves to rambling again with an old Archbishop of Cologne, who carried

them off to Cologne without so much as a single beast to help him.

But my discovery, sinner that I am! was nothing to the discovery made by St. Ambrose, of the Holy Curb, or Bit, which he saw one day lying amongst a heap of old iron, upon the stall of an old iron merchant in the streets of Rome; and he knew it immediately, from the celestial light which shone upon it-though it had lain unsuspected for ages! This precious article is mounted in gold, enshrined in a box of rock crystal, and suspended amidst gilded angels and seraphims, above the tribune of the High Altar of the Cathedral; so far beyond vulgar gaze that you cannot see it, except once a year, on the third of May, when two Canons are sent up for it in a sort of car, raised by pullies, in the same style as the heathen gods and goddesses are hoisted up and down at the Opera house-and it is then carried in procession about the streets, in memory of St. Carlo Borromeo's pilgrimage through the city, barefooted and barenecked, with a halter about his neck, and this holy bit in his hand, to stop the plague,--which it did.

6

While we were admiring the gloomy splendour of the tomb of St. Carlo Borromeo, which rivals the oriental magnificence of the Arabian tales--an Italian who was with us, and who was abusing the dissolute life of an acquaintance of ours, who he said was a 'Mauvais Sujet'-as the comble of his invectives against him, declared - Egli ha da fare peggio che la Guglielmina.' 'He would even do worse things than Wilhelmina;' and on inquiring who this Guglielmina was--who was the acme of all wickedness--he told us the saying had become proverbial at Milan, from a scandalous story of the 13th century. Wilhelmina-the Johanna South