each other, would be less pleasing; but that I verily believe they have
at last dismissed us with general good wishes, proceeding from innate
goodness of heart, and the hope of seeing again, in a year's time or so,
two people who have supplied so many tables here with materials for
conversation, when the fountain of talk was stopt by deficiencies, and
the little stream of prattle ceased to murmur for want of a few pebbles
to break its course.

We are going to Venice by the way of Cremona, and hope for amusement
from external objects: let us at least not deserve or invite
disappointment by seeking for pleasure beyond the limits of innocence.



FROM MILAN TO PADUA.


The first evening's drive carried us no farther than Lodi, a place
renowned through all Europe for its excellent cheese, as out well-known
ballad bears testimony:

Let Lodi or Parmesan bring up the rear.

Those verses were imitated, I fancy, from a French song written by
Monsieur des Yveteaux, of whose extraordinary life and death much has
been said by his cotemporary wits, particularly how some of them found
him playing at shepherd and shepherdess in his own garden with a pretty
Savoyard wench, at seventy-eight years old, _en habit de berger, avec un
chapeau couleur de rose_[Footnote: In a pastoral habit, and a hat turned
up with pink], &c. when he shewed them the famous lines, _Avoir peu de