play at billiards, cards, and other games, or continue conversing the whole evening. They are served with tea, coffee, lemonade, ices, or what other refreshment they choose. Women as well as men are members of this club.

The opera at Florence is a place where the people of quality pay and receive visits, and converse as freely as at the Casino above mentioned.

On the evenings on which there is no opera, it is usual for the genteel company to drive to a public walk immediately without the city, where they remain till it begins to grow duskish.

The Jews are not held in that degree of odium, or subjected to the same humiliating distinctions here in Florence, as in some other cities in Europe. Some of the richest merchants are of that religion.

Few cities in Europe of the same size as Florence afford so fine a field of amusement to those who are fond of churches, palaces public buildings, &c. But the lovers of architecture will be shocked to find several of the finest churches without fronts, which, according to some, is owing to a real deficiency of money; while others assert, they are left in this condition as a pretext for levying contributions to finish them. The chapel of St. Lorenzo is, perhaps, the finest and most expensive habitation that ever was reared for the dead. It is encrusted with precious stones, and adorned with the

workmanship of the best modern sculptors.Some complain that it has a gloomy appearance. There seems to be no impropriety in that, considering what the building was intended for.

The statues which ornament the streets and squares of Florence amount to about one hundred and fifty; many of them of exquisite workmanship, and admired by those of the best taste.

Churches, and palaces, and statues are no doubt ornamental to a city; and the princes are praise-worthy who have taken pains to rear and collect them; but the greatest of all ornaments are cheerful happy living countenances. The taste is not general; but there are some people, who, to a perfect knowledge and unaffected love of the fine arts, join a passion for a collection of this kind, who cannot without uneasiness see one face in a different style, and whose lives and fortunes are employed in smoothing the corrosions of penury and misfortune, and restoring the original air of satisfaction and cheerfulness to the human countenance. Happy the people whose sovereign is inspired with this species of vertù!

UTILITY OF TRAVELLING ABROAD.

Paris.

THERE are so many resources at Paris, that it always requires a great effort to write letters of any considerable length from such a place. But now that I have resolution to take up my pen, I shall endeavour to clear the debt for which you dun me so unmercifully. I own I am surprised that you should require my opinion on the uses of foreign travel, after perusing (as you must have done) the dialogues lately published by an eminent divine, equally distinguished for his learning and taste.

After a young man has employed his time to advantage at a public school, and has continued his application to various branches of science till

the age of twenty, you ask what are the advan

tages he is likely to reap from a tour abroad.

He will see mankind more at large, and in numberless situations and points of view in which they cannot appear in England, or any one country. By comparing the various customs and usages, and hearing the received opinions of different countries, his mind will be enlarged. He will be enabled to correct the theoretical notions he may have formed of human nature, by the practical knowledge of men. By contemplating their various religions, laws, and governments, in action, as it were, and observing the effects they produce on the minds and characters of the

people, he will be able to form a juster estimate of their value than otherwise he could have done. He will see the natives of other countries, not as he sees them in England, mere idle spectators, but busily employed in their various characters, as actors on their own proper stage. He will gradually improve in the knowledge of character, not of Englishmen only, but of men in general; he will cease to be deceived either by the varnish with which men are apt to heighten their own actions, or the dark colours in which they too often paint those of others. He will learn to distinguish the real from the ostensible motive of men's words and behaviour. Finally, by being received with hospitality, conversing familiarly, and living in the reciprocal exchange of good offices with those whom he considers as enemies, or in some unfavorable point of view, the sphere of his benevolence and good will to his brethren will gradually enlarge. His friendships extending beyond the limits of his own country, will embrace characters congenial with his own in other nations. Seas, mountains, rivers are geographical boundaries, but they never limited the good will or esteem of one liberal mind. As for his manner, though it will probably not be so janty as if he had been bred in France from his earliest youth, yet that also will in some degree be improved.

A young man of fortune, by spending a few years abroad, will gratify a natural and laudable

curiosity, and pass a certain portion of his life in an agreeable manner. He will form an acquaintance with that boasted nation whose superior taste and politeness are universally acknowledged; whose fashions and language are adopted by all Europe; and who in science, in power, and commerce are the rivals of Great Britain. He will have opportunities of observing the political constitution of the German empire-that complex body, formed by a confederacy of princes, ecclesiastics, and free cities, comprehending countries of vast extent, inhabited by a hardy race of men, distinguished for solid sense and integrity, who, without having equalled their sprightlier neighbours in works of taste or imagination, have shewn what prodigious efforts of application the human mind is capable of in the severest and least amusing studies, and whose armies exhibit the most perfect models of military discipline.

Viewing the remains of Roman taste, he will feel a thousand emotions of the most interesting nature; while those whose minds are not like his, stored with classical knowledge, gaze with tasteless wonder, or phlegmatic indifference; and exclusive of those monuments of antiquity, he will naturally desire to be acquainted with the present inhabitants of a country which at different periods has produced men, who, by one means or another, have distinguished them