young’s TRAVELS IN FRANCE.
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fpending their fortunes, relatively to the public good, that could have been adopted.How inferior to the encouragement of the fine or the ufeful arts!
The manner in which our little party has pafied their time has been agreeable enough,and wonderfully cheap : we have been very well ferved by a traiteur y with plenty ofgood things, well drelfed, at 4 paols a head for dinner, and a flight repaft at night;fugar, rum, and lemons for punch, which both French and Italians like very well, addeda trifle more. Thefe articles, and the apartment, with wood, which is dear, and theweather, as I noted, very cold, made my whole expence, exclufive of amufements, 3s. 6d.a day Englilh, which l'urely is marvelloufly cheap ; for we had generally eight or tenthings for dinner, and fuch a defert as the feafon would allow, with good wine, thebell I have drunk in Italy . The Abbate Amoretti, who, fortunately for me, arrivedat Florence the fame day as myfelf, was lodged with a friend, a canon, who beingobliged to be abfent in the country moil of the time, the Abbate, to fave the fervantsthe trouble of providing for him only, joined our party, and lived with us for fomedays, adding to our common bank no flight capital in good fenfe, information, andagreeablenefs. Madamede Bouille’s eafy and unafie&ed character, and the good humourof the Baron, united with Mr. Stewart, and his young friend, to make a mixture ofnations—of ideas—of purfuits—and of tempers, which contributed to render converfa-tion diverfified, and the topics more in eontraft, better treated, and more interefting;but never one idea, or one fyllable, that call even a momentary Ihade acrofs that flowof eafe and good humour, which gives to every fociety its bell relilh. There was notone in the party which any of us wifhed out of it; and we were too much pleafed withone another to want any addition. Had I not been turning my face towards my family,and the old friends I left in England, I fliould have quitted our little fociety with morepain. Half a dozen people have rarely been brought together, by fuch mere accident,that have better turned the little nothings of life to account (if I may venture to ufe theexpreflion) by their belt cement—good humour.
The 2d. The day of departure mull needs give fome anxiety to thofe who cannotthrow their final 1 evils on fervants. Renew my connection with that odious Italian race, the vetturini. I had agreed for a compaction de voyage; but was alone, which Iliked much better. To Hep at once from an agreeable lociety, into an Italian voiture ,is a kind of malady which does not agree with my nerves. The belt people appearbut blanks at fuch a moment: the mind having gotten a particular impulfe, one can-not fo foon give it another. The inn at Mafchere, where I found no fire, but in part-nerlhip with fome Germans , did not tend much to revive chearfulnefs, fo I clofed
myfelf in that which Sancho wifely fays, covers a man all over like a cloak.-18
miles.
The 3d. Dine at Pietra Mala, and, while the dinner was preparing, I walked to thevolcano, as it is called. It is a very Angular fpeftacle, on the Hope of a mountain,without any hole or apparent crevice, or any thing that tends towards a crater; thefire burns among fome Hones, as if they were its fuel; the flame fills the fpace of acube of about two feel, befides which there are ten or twelve fmaller and inconfider-able flames. Thefe I extinguiflred in the manner Monf. de la Lande mentions, byrubbing hard with a'flick among the finall (tones: the flame catches again in a fewmoments, but in a manner that convinces me the whole is merely a vent to a currentof inflammable air, which Signore Amoretti informed me has been lately aflerted byfome perfon who has tried experiments on it. The flame revives with finall expiations,exaftly like thofe of inflammable air fired from a fmall phial; and when I returned tothe inn, the landlord had a bottle of it, which he burns at pleafure, to fhew his guefts.
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