staid in the antichamber, and found that he was listening in spight of
sorrow and starving.

With this slight sketch of national manners I finish my chapter, and
proceed to the description of, or rather observations and reflections
made during a winter's residence at



MILAN.


For we did not stay at Pavia to see any thing: it rained so, that no
pleasure could have been obtained by the sight of a botanical garden;
and as to the university, I have the promise of seeing it upon a future
day, in company of some literary friends. Truth to tell, our weather is
suddenly become so wet, the roads so heavy with incessant rain, that
king William's departure from his own foggy country, or his welcome to
our gloomy one, where this month is melancholy even, to a proverb, could
not have been clouded with a thicker atmosphere surely, than was mine to
Milan upon the fourth day of dismal November, 1784.

Italians, by what I can observe, suffer their minds to be much under the
dominion of the sky; and attribute every change in their health, or even
humour, as seriously to its influence, as if there were no nearer causes
of alteration than the state of the air, and as if no doubt remained of
its immediate power, though they are willing enough here to poison it
with the scent of wood-ashes within doors, while fires in the grate seem
to run rather low, and a brazier full of that pernicious stuff is
substituted in its place, and driven under the table during dinner. It