t leaves the hands of the vendor, except that
reserved for the priesthood; such, at any rate, was the case before the
French Revolution, and no doubt the wine sellers would oppose the abolition
of so _ancient_ and _sacred_ a custom. The Milanese are a gay people,
hospitable and fond of pleasure: they are more addicted to the pleasures of
the table than the other people of Italy, and dinner parties are in
consequence much more frequent here than in other Italian towns. The women
here are said to be much better educated than in the rest of Italy, for
Napoleon took great pains to promote and encourage female instruction, well
knowing that to be the best means of regenerating a country.

The dialect spoken in the Milanese has a harsh nasal accent, to my ear
peculiarly disagreeable. Pure Italian or Tuscan is little spoken here, and
that only to foreigners. French, on the contrary, is spoken a good deal;
but the Milanese, male and female, among one another, speak invariably the
_patois_ of the country, which has more analogy to the French than to the
Italian, but without the grace or euphony of either.

I have visited likewise the _Zecca_, or Mint, where I observed the whole
process of coining. They still continue to coin here Napoleons of gold and
silver, with the date of 1814, and they coin likewise crowns or dollars
with Maria Theresa's head, with the date of the last year of her reign. The
double Napoleon of forty _franchi_ of the Kingdom of Italy is a beautiful
coin; on the run are the words, _Dio protegge l'Italia_. It may not be
unnecessary to remark that in Italy by the word _Napoleone_, as a coin, is
meant the five franc piece with the head of Napoleon, and a twenty franc
gold piece is called _Napoleone d'oro_.

At the _Zecca_ I was shown some gold, silver and bronze medals, struck in
commemoration of the formation of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, under the
sceptre of Austria. They bear the following inscription, which, if I
recollect aright, is from Horace:

Redeunt in aurum
Tempora priscum,[54]

but this golden age is considered by the Italians as a very leaden one; and
it seems to bear as much analogy to the golden age, as the base Austrian
copper coin, daubed over with silver, and made to pass for fifteen and
thirty soldi, has to the real gold and silver _Napoleoni_, which by the way
are said to be fast disappearing; they are sent to Vienna, and Milan will
probably be in time blessed with a similar paper