mit of which stands Montefiascone, from which I have now the happiness of writing to you. Here, therefore, I will conclude this most unconscionable epistle, which has been scribbled at all odd times and strange places, but the most part of it in the carriage; and perhaps it partakes not a little of the tediousness of the way, which the inditing of it helped to beguile.

I have learnt now to make very tolerable pothooks with a pencil, in spite of jolting. Talking of jolting, I believe I never told you that we are now upon what is supposed to be the ancient Via Cassia, (a way now something of the roughest) which passed by Montefiascone, Chiusi, and Siena to Pisa, and was made at an early period of the Republic by somebody called Cassius, though who he was, and when he lived, seem somewhat dubious.

P. S.-We have just had dinner, or supper, as they call it; and if we got little or nothing to eat, I must do Montefiascone the justice to say that it is deservedly famed for the most luscious Muschat wine. However, I hope we shall not follow the example of an old German prelate, who, it seems, drank it at this inn till he died.

* Sp. Cassius the Consul, who, in A. R. 268, obtained for the Roman people the Agrarian law-in return for which he was condemned and executed-could not have been the maker of this road; for Livy, who enumerates all-even the most trifling of his public acts, would assuredly have mentioned this.

We left Orvietto to-day on the right, which is also famed for a light pleasant table wine, generally considered the best produced in the estates of the church. So you see we have got into a very convivial country.

The inn here is a paradise to the two last. Still, I wish you could only judge of its merits, and see the den of dirt and wretchedness in which we are sitting, and must sleep. Pope pathetically laments the fate of one

"in the worst inn's worst room"

in England. How I wish I could exchange them

for the best of both at Montefiascone !

LETTER V.

We set off on this, the fifth day of our weary pilgrimage, as usual, long before the dawn; and after traversing for many hours a dreary, unenclosed, and houseless plain, we reached the city of Viterbo; where, having made a sumptuous breakfast on coffee (real coffee, not made of burnt beans) and milk, -rarities we had not seen for many a day-wę went out to see the town, which is very ancient, very dirty, and beggarly in the extreme. This indeed did not surprise us much, when we found there were twenty-eight convents of nuns and begging friars in a place which does not contain more than nine thousand inhabitants! The streets are narrow, and entirely paved with flat flag-stones, in the same manner as at Florence, but so deep in mire, that it was impossible to see the lava of which our guide informed us they were composed.

This same guide was one of the dirtiest-looking creatures I ever beheld, but he gravely offered his services to us as Cicerone; and he was certainly useful in shewing us the way through the town.

We paid a visit, at her own convent, to Santa Rosa, a very surprising woman. "Cowards die many times before their death," but this saint has died once since hers-a more extraordinary feat than any I ever heard of being performed, either by saint or sinner-excepting by Liston in Tom Thumb, who always dies twice.

She originally died, it seems, in the thirteenth century; but after lying dead a few hundred years, she came to life one night when her chapel took fire, got up and rang the bell to give notice of it, and then laid quietly down and died again, without any body knowing any thing of the matter. The chapel, however, was burnt down, though she had got out of her grave and rung the bell to prevent it; all her fine clothes, too, were burned off her back, and her very ring was melted on her finger; but she remained unconsumed, though her face and hands are as black as a negro's, and infinitely more hideous than any thing I ever saw in my life. However, they say she was very fair four hundred years ago, before she was singed, and that she never was embalmed even after her first death, but was preserved solely in the odour of sanctity. She lies in a gilt sepulchre, on a bed strewed with silver flowers, but a grate keeps prying eyes like mine at a proper distance, and darkness and wax tapers increase the mysterious gloom. This remarkable saint began, with praise-worthy industry, to work miracles as soon as she was born, by raising a child from the dead, while she was yet a baby herself; and miracles she still continues to perform every day-as

the nun who exhibited her informed me. On inquiring what kind of miracles they were, I was in-. formed that she cures all sort of diseases, heals sores, and even re-establishes some lame legs; but she does not by any means always choose to do it, thinking it proper that the infirmities of many should continue. I have no doubt that this nun who related her history to me, and with whom I had a long conversation, really and truly believes in it all. She knelt before the saint in silent devotion first, and then gave me a bit of cord, the use of which perplexed me much; and while I was turning it round and round in my fingers, and wondering what she expected me to do with it, a troop of dirty beggars burst into the church, together with some better-dressed, but scarcely less dirty people; and the whole company having adored the saint, received from the nun, every one, bits of cord like mine. I inquired the use of them, and was told they had been round the body of the saint, where they had acquired such virtues, that, tied round any other body, they would save it from "molte disgrazie."* The beggars no sooner got their bits of cord, than they became so clamorous-though I am sure I had nothing half so marvellous to give them that they fairly drove me away. These nuns are all of noble families. They are of the Franciscan, one of the least rigid of the female monastic orders. They are not obliged to midnight vigils, nor any extraordinary acts

A great many misfortunes.