friends of her's; and with the light of a full moon, if we should want
it, we set out again in quest of new adventures, and mean to sleep this
night under the pope's protection:--may God but grant us his!



FERRERA.


We have crossed the Po, which I expected to have found more magnificent,
considering the respectable state I left it in at Cremona; but scarcely
any thing answers that expectation which fancy has long been fermenting
in one's mind.

I took a young woman once with me to the coast of Sussex, who, at
twenty-seven years old and a native of England, had never seen the sea;
nor any thing else indeed ten miles out of London:--And well, child!
said I, are not you much surprised?--"It is a fine sight, to be sure,"
replied she coldly, "but,"--but what? you are not disappointed are
you?--"No, not disappointed, but it is not quite what I expected when I
saw the ocean." Tell me then, pray good girl, and tell me quickly, what
did you expect to see? "_Why I expected_," with a hesitating accent, "_I
expected to see a great deal of water_." This answer set me _then_ into
a fit of laughter, but I have _now_ found out that I am not a whit
wiser than Peggy: for what did I figure to myself that I should find the
Po? only a great deal of water to be sure; and a very great deal of
water it certainly is, and much more, God knows, than I ever saw before,
except between the shores of Calais and Dover; yet I did feel something
like disappointment too; when my imagination wandering over all that the
poets had said about it, and finding earth too little to contain their