You, Fairfax, have frequently asked me to give you accounts of this and
that place, of the things I have seen, and of the observations I have
made. But I have more frequently put the same kind of questions to
myself, and never yet could return a satisfactory answer. I have seen
people whose manners are so different from those of my own country,
that I have seemed to act with them from a kind of conviction of their
being of another species. Yet a moment's consideration undeceives me: I
find them to be mere men. Men of different habits, indeed, but actuated
by the same passions, the same desire of self-gratification. Yes,
Fairfax, the sun moon and stars make their appearance, in Italy, as
regularly as in England; nay much more so, for there is not a tenth
part of the intervening clouds.

When molested by their dirt, their vermin, their beggars, their
priests, and their prejudices, how often have I looked at them with
contempt! The uncleanliness that results from heat and indolence, the
obsequious slavishness of the common people, contrasted with their
loquacious impertinence, the sensuality of their hosts of monks, nay
the gluttony even of their begging friars, their ignorant adoration of
the rags and rotten wood which they themselves dress up, the protection
afforded to the most atrocious criminals if they can but escape to a
mass of stone which they call sacred, the little horror in which they
hold murder, the promptness with which they assassinate for affronts
which they want the spirit to resent, their gross buffooneries
religious and theatrical, the ridiculous tales told to the vulgar by
their preachers, and the improbable farces which are the delight of the
gentle and the simple, all these, and many other things of a similar
nature, seem to degrade them below rational creatures.