hich you
know has been found of wonderful efficacy in consumptive cases. After
some deliberation, I resolved upon the scheme, which I have now happily
executed. I had a most eager curiosity to see the antiquities of
Florence and Rome: I longed impatiently to view those wonderful
edifices, statues, and pictures, which I had so often admired in prints
and descriptions. I felt an enthusiastic ardor to tread that very
classical ground which had been the scene of so many great
atchievements; and I could not bear the thought of returning to England
from the very skirts of Italy, without having penetrated to the capital
of that renowned country. With regard to my health, I knew I could
manage matters so as to enjoy all the benefits that could be expected
from the united energy of a voyage by sea, a journey by land, and a
change of climate.

Rome is betwixt four and five hundred miles distant from Nice, and one
half of the way I was resolved to travel by water. Indeed there is no
other way of going from hence to Genoa, unless you take a mule, and
clamber along the mountains at the rate of two miles an hour, and at
the risque of breaking your neck every minute. The Apennine mountains,
which are no other than a continuation of the maritime Alps, form an
almost continued precipice from Villefranche to Lerici, which is almost
forty-five miles on the other side of Genoa; and as they are generally
washed by the sea, there is no beach or shore, consequently the road is
carried along the face of the rocks, except at certain small intervals,
which are occupied by towns and villages. But, as there is a road for
mules and foot passengers, it might certainly be enlarged and improved
so as to render it practicable by chaises and other wheel-carriages,
and a toll might be exacted, which in a little time would defray the
expence: for certainly no person who travels to Italy, from England,
Holland, France, or Spain, would make a troublesome circuit to pass the
Alps by the way of Savoy and Piedmont, if he could have the convenience
of going post by the way of Aix, Antibes, and Nice, along the side of
the Mediterranean, and through the Riviera of Genoa, which from the sea
affords the most agreeable and amazing prospect I ever beheld. What
pity it is, they cannot restore the celebrated Via Aurelia, mentioned
in the Itinerarium of Antoninus, which extended from Rome by the way of
Genoa, and through this country as far as Arles upon the Rhone. It w