suspiciously on the plain; he told us too that in eight
hours time no trace was left either of the devasters or devasted,
excepting the skeleton of the noble creature neatly picked; a standing
proof of the power of numbers against single force.

These northern emigrants the Goths, however, have done more; they have
fixed a mode of carrying on human affairs, that I think will never be so
far exterminated as to leave no vestiges behind: and even while one
contemplates the mischief they have made--even while one's pen engraves
one's indignation at their success; the old baron in his castle,
preceded and surrounded by loyal dependants, who desired only to live
under his protection and die in his defence, inspires a notion of
dignity unattainable by those who, seeking the beautiful, are by so far
removed from the sublime of life, and affords to the mind momentary
images of surly magnificence, ill exchanged perhaps by _fancy_, though
_truth_ has happily substituted a succession of soft ideas and social
comforts: knowledge, virtue, riches, happiness. Let it be remembered
however, that if the theme is superior to the song, we always find those
poets who live in the second class, celebrating the days past by those
who had their existence in the first. These reflections are forced upon
me by the view of Lombard manners, and the accounts I daily pick up
concerning the Brescian and Bergamase nobility; who still exert the
Gothic power of protecting murderers who profess themselves their
vassals; and who still exercise those virtues and vices natural to man
in his semi-barbarous state: fervent devotion, constant love, heroic
friendship, on the one part; gross superstition, indulgence of brutal
appetite, and diabolical revenge, on the other.

In all hot countries, however, flowers and weeds shoot up to enormous
growth: in colder climes, where poison can scarce be feared, perfumes
can seldom be boasted.

Verona is the gayest looking town I ever lived in; beautifully
situated, the hills around it elegant, the mountains at a distance
venerable: the silver Adige rolling through the Valley, while such a
glow of blossoms now ornament the rising grounds, and such cheerfulness
smiles in the sweet countenances of its inhabitants, that one is tempted
to think it the birth-place of Euphrosyne, where

Zephyr with Aurora playing,
As he met her once a maying, &c.
Fill'd her with thee a daughter fair,
So buxom, blythe, and debon