possesses all delights in his villa upon the banks of the Brenta, is a
very lively portrait, and would be natural too; but that Voltaire, as a
Frenchman, could not forbear making his character speak in a very
unItalian manner, boasting of his felicity in a style they never use,
for they are really no puffers, no vaunters of that which they possess;
make no disgraceful comparisons between their own rarities and the want
of them in other countries, nor offend you as the French do, with false
pity and hateful consolations.

If any thing in England seem to excite their wonder and ill-placed
compassion, it is our coal fires, which they persist in thinking
strangely unwholesome--and a melancholy proof that we are grievously
devoid of wood, before we can prevail upon ourselves to dig the bowels
of old earth for fewel, at the hazard of our precious health, if not of
its certain loss; nor could I convince the wisest man I tried at, that
wood burned to chark is a real poison, while it would be difficult by
any process of chemistry to force much evil out of coal. They are
steadily of opinion, that consumptions are occasioned by these fires,
and that all the subjects of Great Britain are consumptively disposed,
merely because those who are so, go into Italy for change of air: though
I never heard that the wood smoke helped their breath, or a brazierfull
of ashes under the table their appetite. Mean time, whoever seeks to
convince instead of persuade an Italian, will find he has been employed
in a Sisyphean labour; the stone may roll to the top, but is sure to
return, and rest at his feet who had courage to try the experiment.
Logic is a science they love not, and I think steadily refuse to
cultivate; nor is argument a style of conversation they naturally
affect--as Lady Macbeth says, "_Question enrageth him_;" and the
dialogues of Socrates would to them be as disgusting as the violence of
Xantippe.