heir tastes for small birds in full force; and
consider beccafichi, ortolani, &c. as the most agreeable dainties: it
must be confessed that they dress them incomparably. The sheep here are
all lean and dirty-looking, few in number too; but the better the soil
the worse the mutton we know, and here is no land to throw away, where
every inch turns to profit in the olive-yards, vines, or something of
much higher value than letting out to feed sheep.

Population seems much as in France, I think: but the families are not,
in either nation, disposed according to British notions of propriety;
all stuffed together into little towns and large houses, _entessees_, as
the French call it; one upon another, in such a strange way, that were
it not for the quantity of grapes on which the poor people live, with
other acescent food enjoined by the church, and doubtless suggested by
the climate, I think putrid fevers must necessarily carry off crowds of
them at once.

The head-dress of the women in this drive through some of the northern
states of Italy varied at every post; from the velvet cap, commonly a
crimson one, worn by the girls in Savoia, to the Piedmontese plait round
the bodkin at Turin, and the odd kind of white wrapper used in the
exterior provinces of the Genoese dominions. Uniformity of almost any
sort gives a certain pleasure to the eye, and it seems an invariable
rule in these countries that all the women of every district should
dress just alike. It is the best way of making the men's task easy in
judging which is handsomest; for taste so varies the human figure in
France and England, that it is impossible to have an idea how many
pretty faces and agreeable forms would lose and how many gain admirers
in those nations, were a sudden edict to be published that all should
dress exactly alike for a year. Mean time, since we left Deffeins, no
such delightful place by way of inn have we yet seen as here at Novi. My
chief amusement at Alexandria was to look out upon the _huddled_
marketplace, as a great dramatic writer of our day has called it; and
who could help longing there for Zoffani's pencil to paint the lively
scene?

Passing the Po by moon-light near Casale exhibited an entertainment of a
very different nature, not unmixed with ill-concealed fear indeed;
though the contrivance of crossing it is not worse managed than a ferry
at Kew or Richmond used to be before our bridges were built. Bridges
over the rapid Po would