who would find it beyond his means to make a journey to Florence or Rome.

If these objects of art are to be taken away, it should be stipulated so in
the treaty of peace; and then everybody would understand it. This would be
putting it on the fairest footing. You then say to France: "You gained
these things by conquest; you lose them by defeat"; but for God's sake let
us have no more of that _cant_ about revolutionary robberies!


PARIS, ----

I went for the first time to the Grand Opera, or, as it is here called, the
Académie Royale de Musique, which is in the Rue de Richelieu. _Armida_ was
the piece performed, the music by Glück. The decorations were splendid and
the dancing beyond all praise. The scenes representing the garden of Armida
and the nymphs dancing fully expressed in the mimic art those beautiful
lines of Tasso:

Cogliam d'amor la rosa! amiamo or, quando
Esser si puote riamato amando![36]

The effect of the dissolution of the palace and gardens by the waving of
Armida's wand is astonishing; it appears completely to be the work of
inchantment, from the rapidity of execution which follows the _potentissime
parole_. The French recitative however does not please me. The serious
opera is an exotic and does not seem to thrive on the soil of France. The
language does not possess sufficient intonation to give effect to the
recitative.

On the contrary, the comic operas are excellent; and here the national