clean in his person; and his apartment and garden, which he keeps and
cultivates without any assistance, was neat to a degree. He has four
little rooms, furnished in the prettiest manner, and hung with good
prints. One of them is a library, and another a gallery. He has several
canary-birds disposed in a pretty manner in breeding-cages. In his
garden was a bed of good tulips in bloom, flowers and fruit-trees, and
all neatly kept. They are permitted at certain hours to talk to
strangers, but never to one another, or to go out of their convent. But
what we chiefly went to see was the small cloister, with the history of
St. Bruno, their founder, painted by Le Soeur. It consists of twenty-two
pictures, the figures a good deal less than life. But sure they are
amazing! I don't know what Raphael may be in Rome, but these pictures
excel all I have seen in Paris and England. The figure of the dead man
who spoke at his burial, contains all the strongest and horridest ideas,
of ghastliness, hypocrisy discovered, and the height of damnation, pain
and cursing. A Benedictine monk, who was there at the same time, said to
me of this picture: _C'est une fable, mais on la croyoit autrefois._
Another, who showed me relics in one of their churches, expressed as
much ridicule for them. The pictures I have been speaking of are ill
preserved, and some of the finest heads defaced, which was done at first
by a rival of Le Soeur's. Adieu! dear West, take care of your health;
and some time or other we will talk over all these things with more
pleasure than I have had in seeing them.

Yours ever.

_THE CARNIVAL--THE FLORENTINES CIVIL, GOOD-NATURED, AND FOND OF THE
ENGLISH--A CURIOUS CHALLENGE._

TO RICHARD WEST, ESQ.

FLORENCE, _February_ 27, 1740, N.S.

Well, West, I have found a little unmasqued moment to write to you; but
for this week past I have been so muffled up in my domino, that I have
not had the command of my elbows. But what have you been doing all the
mornings? Could you not write then?--No, then I was masqued too; I have
done nothing but slip out of my domino into bed, and out of bed into my
domino. The end of the Carnival is frantic, bacchanalian; all the morn
one makes parties in masque to the shops and coffee-houses, and all the
evening to the operas and balls. _Then I have danced, good gods! how
have I danced!_ The Italians are fond to a degree of our country dances:
_Cold and raw_ they only know by the tune; _Blowzybella