r housed and fed than any I have seen in Pianura. The
monks have a school of agriculture, less pretentious but better-managed
than the Duke's. Some of them study physics and chemistry, and there are
good chirurgeons among them, who care for the poor without pay. The aged
and infirm peasants are housed in a neat almshouse, and the sick nursed
in a clean well-built lazaret. Altogether an agreeable picture of rural
prosperity, though I had rather it had been the result of FREE LABOUR
than of MONASTIC BOUNTY.

The 8th.

By appointment, to the Duke's Egeria. This lady, the Signorina F.V.,
having heard that I was in Pianura, had desired the Signor Andreoni to
bring me to her.

I had expected a female of the loud declamatory type: something of the
Corilla Olimpica order; but in this was agreeably disappointed. The
Signorina V. is modestly lodged, lives in the frugal style of the middle
class, and refuses to accept a title, though she is thus debarred from
going to court. Were it not indiscreet to speculate on a lady's age, I
should put hers at somewhat above thirty. Though without the Duchess's
commanding elegance she has, I believe, more beauty of a quiet sort: a
countenance at once soft and animated, agreeably tinged with melancholy,
yet lit up by the incessant play of thought and emotion that succeed
each other in her talk. Better conversation I never heard; and can
heartily confirm the assurances of those who had told me that the lady
was as agreeable in discourse as learned in the closet. (Footnote: It
has before now been observed that the FREE and VOLATILE manners of
foreign ladies tend to blind the English traveller to the inferiority of
their PHYSICAL charms. Note by a Female Friend of the Author.)

On entering, found a numerous company assembled to compliment my hostess
on her recent appointment as doctor of the University. This is an honour
not uncommonly conferred in Italy, where female learning, perhaps from
its rarity, is highly esteemed; but I am told the ladies thus
distinguished seldom speak in public, though their degree entitles them
to a chair in the University. In the Signorina V.'s society I found the
most advanced reformers of the duchy: among others Signor Gamba, the
famous pamphleteer, author of a remarkable treatise on taxation, which
had nearly cost him his liberty under the late Duke's reign. He is a man
of extreme views and sarcastic tongue, with an irritability of manner
that is perhaps the res