esides with him.
His sister also is settled at Pescia, being married to a Tuscan gentleman
of the name of Forti. The sister has a full share of the talents and
amiable qualities of her mother and brother. With a family of such
resources as this, you may suppose our conversation did not flag for a
moment, nor do I recollect in the course of my whole life having passed
such a pleasant time; and I only wished that the three days could be
prolonged to three years. Politics, the occurrences of the day, living
characters, classical reminiscences, French, English, Italian and German
litterature, afforded us an inexhaustible variety of topics for
conversation: and the profound local knowledge that Mr Sismondi possesses
of Italy, of its history and antiquities, renders his communications of the
utmost value to the traveller. Our supper was prolonged to a late hour and
I question if the suppers and conversations of Scipio and Atticus, those
_nodes caenaeque Deum_[100] were more piquant or afforded more variety than
ours. Shakespeare, Schiller, Voltaire, Ariosto, Dante, Filangieri, Michel
Angelo, Washington, Napoleon, all furnished anecdotes and reflexions in
abundance.

The last evening that I passed here, two families of Pescia came in. One of
the gentlemen was a great reader of voyages and travels, and India suddenly
became the subject of discourse. As I had passed six years in that country,
during which time I had visited the three Presidencies of Calcutta, Madras,
and Bombay, having ascended the Ganges as far as Benares, having visited
the Mysore country and Nizam's territory, having sojourned three weeks
among the splendid and magnificent ruins of Bijanagur or Bisnagar, having
travelled thro' the whole of the Deccan from Pondicherry to cape Comorin,
besides having traversed on horseback the whole circumference of Ceylon and
across the whole island from East to West by the Wanny, I was enabled to
furnish them with many an anecdote from the Eastern world, which to them
was a great treat, and I dare say at times my narration appeared almost as
marvellous as a story in the Arabian Nights, particularly when I related
the various religious ceremonies, the grim Idol of Juggernaut, the swinging
to _recover cast_, the exposure of old people to the holy death in the
Ganges by stopping up their nose, mouth and ears with mud, and placing them
on the water's edge at low tide in order that they should be swept off at
the high water; the ho