lamps, &c. on the left hand. This open Ranelagh, so suited to the
climate, is exceedingly pleasing:--here is room to sit, to chat, to
saunter up and down, from two o'clock in the morning, when the opera
ends, till a hot sun sends us all home to rest--for late hours must be
complied with at Venice, or you can have no diversion at all, as the
earliest Casino belonging to your soberest friends has not a candle
lighted in it till past midnight.

But I am called from my book to see the public library; not a large one
I find, but ornamented with pieces of sculpture, whose eminence has not,
I am sure, waited for my description: the Jupiter and Leda particularly,
said to be the work of Phidias, whose Ganymede in the same collection
they tell us is equally excellent. Having heard that Guarini's
manuscript of the Pastor Fido, written in his own hand, was safely kept
at this place, I asked for it, and was entertained to see his numberless
corrections and variations from the original thought, like those of
Pope's Homer preserved in the British Museum; some of which I copied
over for Doctor Johnson to print, at the time he published his Lives of
the English Poets. My curiosity led me to look in the Pastor Fido for
the famous passage of _Legge humana_, _inhumana_, _&c._ and it was
observable enough that he had written it three different ways before he
pitched on that peculiar expression which caused his book to be
prohibited. Seeing the manuscript I took notice, however, of the
beautiful penmanship with which it was written: our English hand-writing
cotemporary to his was coarse, if I recollect, and very angular;--but
_Italian hand_ was the first to become elegant, and still retains some
privileges amongst us. Once more, every thing small, and every thing
great, revived after the dark ages--in Italy.

Looking at the Mint was an hour's time spent with less amusement. The