n that he can make no
similar return. An evil spirit of competition is thus awakened, and all
true hospitality destroyed."

While Mr. Headley claims as an american, a beautiful english lady, whose
charms had been transmitted from her american mother, he sadly writes of
not having found in Italy not a really pretty woman; and the only one he
met, who was called the belle of the city, it was, what he would term, of
the doll kind. And mind here, benevolent reader, that the Italy of Mr.
Headley, is nothing else but the city of Genoa! He has not yet gone out of
it.

To define beauty, I have nothing else to say, that a beauty is the beauty
of different men, who have different sight, and different feeling. The
artist will always draw it as he feels it himself. But, he who pretends to
settle rules on beauty, must needs not know what beauty is. The beauty of
one's eyes cannot be the beauty of another, though rules we find settled
by different nations. The Venus of De Medici is a greek beauty, whom a
greek would love in preference to any italian, english, french, chinese,
or indian beauty. But the chinese will always prefer the chinese, as well
as the indian the wild one. He who compares the music of Hyden or Mozart,
with the music of Rossini or Bellini, shows too plainly, he does not
understand the art. He who wishes to see pretty women, has only to step
into the car, and in a few hours he will see in Baltimore a great many.
But, if he delays five or six years longer, he might meet there the
ugliest in the world, so the glory of the world is transient. Once, in
passing through a small city of France, all the women I saw in that place
were so pretty, that I thought to have fallen into the garden of Armida.
Still, though we know that every dog has its happy days, there are
travelers who did not pass but six months in Italy, running through ten
cities of that populous country, who, like Mr. Headley, asserted not to
have seen one single pretty italian lady. I did pass myself more than six
months in one single city of America, without having met one pretty lady,
when to my astonishment, I met in that very city, on a public walk,
beauties as cheerful as the sun. To bless this being of war, called man,
nature did scatter beauties in every part of this singular planet.

However, though Mr. Headley would never consent with the plurality of
travelers, who praised the black-eyed beauties of Italy, after having
resided in the city of Geno