est, by the way, I have ever seen: it beats our theatres hollow
in beauty and scenery, and those of Milan and Brescia bow before
it. The opera and its sirens were much like other operas and women,
but the subject of the said opera was something edifying; it
turned--the plot and conduct thereof--upon a fact narrated by Livy
of a hundred and fifty married ladies having poisoned a hundred and
fifty husbands in good old times. The bachelors of Rome believed
this extraordinary mortality to be merely the common effect of
matrimony or a pestilence; but the surviving Benedicts, being all
seized with the cholic, examined into the matter, and found that
'their possets had been drugged;' the consequence of which was,
much scandal and several suits at law. This is really and truly the
subject of the musical piece at the Fenice; and you can't conceive
what pretty things are sung and recitativoed about the _horrenda
strage_. The conclusion was a lady's head about to be chopped off
by a lictor, but (I am sorry to say) he left it on, and she got up
and sung a trio with the two Consuls, the Senate in the back-ground
being chorus. The ballet was distinguished by nothing remarkable,
except that the principal she-dancer went into convulsions because
she was not applauded on her first appearance; and the manager came
forward to ask if there was 'ever a physician in the theatre.'
There was a Greek one in my box, whom I wished very much to
volunteer his services, being sure that in this case these would
have been the last convulsions which would have troubled the
ballarina; but he would not. The crowd was enormous, and in coming
out, having a lady under my arm, I was obliged, in making way,
almost to 'beat a Venetian and traduce the state,' being compelled
to regale a person with an English punch in the guts, which sent
him as far back as the squeeze and the passage would admit. He did
not ask for another, but, with great signs of disapprobation and
dismay, appealed to his compatriots, who laughed at him.

"I am going on with my Armenian studies in a morning, and assisting
and stimulating in the English portion of an English and Armenian
grammar, now publishing at the convent of St. Lazarus.

"The superior of the friars is a bishop, and a fine old fellow,
with the beard