of all nations, walking in the streets in the proper habits of their
country. The harbour is the most secure sea-port in Europe, being
land-locked on all sides, except at a verry narrow entrance; and as
there is very little rise or fall of water, the vessels are always
afloat. Many of the galley slaves have little shops near the spot where
the galleys are moored, and appear happy and decently dressed; some of
them are rich, and make annual remittances to their friends. In the
_Hotel de Ville_ are two fine large pictures, which were taken lately
from the Jesuits' college; one represents the dreadful scenes which were
seen in the _Grand Course_ during the great plague at _Marseilles_; the
other, the same sad scene on the Quay, before the doors of the house in
which it now hangs. A person cannot look upon these pictures one minute
before he becomes enthralled in the woes which every way present
themselves. You see the good Bishop confessing the sick, the carts
carrying out the dead, children sucking at the breasts of their dead
mothers, wives and husbands bewailing, dead bodies lowering out of the
higher windows by cords, the slaves plundering, the Priests exhorting,
and such a variety of interesting and afflicting scenes so forcibly
struck out by the painter, that you seem to hear the groans, weepings,
and bewailings, from the dying, the sick and the sound; and the eye and
mind have no other repose on these pictures but by fixing it on a dead
body. The painter, who was upon the spot, has introduced his own figure,
but armed like a serjeant with a halberd. The pictures are indeed
dreadfully fine; one is much larger than the other; and it is said the
town Magistrates cut it to fit the place it is in; but it is impossible
to believe any body of men could be guilty of such an act of
_barbarism_! There is still standing in this town, the house of a Roman
senator, now inhabited by a shoe-maker. In the cathedral they have a
marble-stone, on which there is engraved, in Arabic characters, a
monumental inscription to the following effect: