From being less frequented by travellers than most other places in Italy, Ancona possesses no good inn. The furniture of the apartments assigned to us, and the dinner served, were of the most primitive kind; but as both were clean, and not deficient in quantity, though inferior in quality, we were not discontented. A copious jug of smoking hot brandy punch, brought up by the landlord when we had about half dined, more surprised than pleased us. He smiled self-complacently as he laid it on the table, and assured us, that knowing from hearsay the partiality of English milords for that beverage, he had acquired the art of making it from a captain of a ship, and hoped we should find it excellent.

Our courier was more than half disposed to resent as an insult this well meant attention of our host. He declared, with no little gesticulation, that "he, who well knew the habits of English lords and ladies, had never seen any one of them drink hot punch at, or after dinner; iced ponche-à-la-Romaine, it was true, he had known them to partake of sometimes, but never of the abomination now presented."

The host shrugged his shoulders, looked the displeasure to which he did not give utterance, and walked away, taking with him the steaming punch,

the fumes of which had not improved the odour of the salle-a-manger. Nevertheless, I dare be sworn, the said courier and the other domestics failed not to do ample justice to the preparation.

During our walk on the mole we encountered several pretty women, and were struck with a peculiarity generally observable in Italians, namely, the total absence of that coquetry, so visible in women with pretensions to beauty, in France, and even in England. Italian women look as if deep passions would find them ready to obey their dictates, but that to the minor ones, such as vanity and coquetry, they were not disposed to yield.

This peculiarity equally pervades women of all classes in Italy; for I have observed it in those of the highest rank, as well as in the lowest. It is this concentration of passion which in the middle ages led the softer sex into the commission of crimes from which the heart of woman naturally recoils, originating incidents that fill the old chronicles with tales of horror. In our more civilized days, a similar disposition exhibits itself in attachments which, if not always blameless, are generally of long duration, and exclude the flirtations commenced through vanity, and continued through folly, so frequently witnessed in other countries. I have seen Italian

women known to have attachments, the publicity of which in France or England would have called forth the severest censure, if not exclusion from society, absolutely shocked at beholding the flirtations of ladies of both these nations, though free from actual guilt, or even the thought of it. When the innocence of such flirtations has been explained to the Italians, they were not less shocked, and they have said "What, then, can be the motive that induces these ladies to permit such marked attentions in public, and to receive them with such complacency, if no real attachment exists?" The motive assigned, namely, vanity, prompting the desire of exciting admiration, and the wish for its continuance leading to an apparent preference for the adulator, they could not understand, because vanity has so little influence over them.

RAVENNA. The fertility of the country around Ravenna forcibly reminded me of Tuscany, and the flourishing aspect of the farms denotes not only the richness of the soil, but the wealth and industry of the proprietors. What a melancholy contrast is afforded by the town itself, in which all looks as if falling to decay. Large palaces untouched by paint, for centuries; shops so ill supplied and untempt

ing, as to denote the stagnation of commerce; and streets, through many parts of which the rank grass obtrudes.

On reaching the inn, for there is only one in the town, and that, is of a most primitive character of rusticity, we ordered our repast, and sallied forth on foot to view the lions of the place. As we proceeded we were surprised to find the streets wholly deserted, and the houses shut up, which gave the place the air of a city ravaged by the plague, and deserted by those who could fly from it. Not a human being was to be seen; nay, the very dogs, usually encountered in towns, seemed to have followed the example of their owners, and to have fled.

Various were the conjectures we formed as to the probable cause of this desertion of the silent and solitary city through which we were pacing, and vainly did we look around in search of some one of whom to demand an explanation of it; when on turning the corner of a larger street or place than we had hitherto passed, the mystery was solved, in a manner that shocked our feelings not a little; for we suddenly came almost in personal contact with the bodies of three men hanging from bars erected for the purpose of suspending them. Never did I

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behold so fearful a sight! The ghastly faces were rendered still more appalling by the floating matted locks, and long beards; which, as the bodies were agitated into movement by the wind, moved backward and forward. The eyes seemed starting from their sockets, and the tongues protruded from the distended lips, as if in horrid mockery. I felt transfixed by the terrible sight, from which I could not avert my gaze; and each movement of the bodies seemed to invest them with some new features of horror. A party of soldiers of the Pope guarded the place of execution, and paced up and down with gloomy looks, in which fear was more evident than disgust. Within view of the spot stood the tomb of Dante, whose "Inferno" offers scarcely a more hideous picture than the one presented to our contemplation. The papal uniform, too, proclaiming that the deaths of these unfortunate men had been inflicted by order of him who professed to be the vicar of the Father of Mercy on earth, added to the horror of the sight.

This tragedy, whose denouement we beheld, was one of the fatal results of arbitrary power, driving into madness men who might have been restrained by salutary laws, judiciously administered. Nowhere has the power of the papal government been mer