She had liberal ideas and an independent
spirit. I really almost caught myself shedding tears at this event, and had
she been buried here, I should have gone to scatter flowers upon her tomb:
His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani
Munere.[108]
Has no royalist or ministerial poet been found to do hommage to her
_manes_? Had she lived to be Queen of England she would have found a
thousand venal pens to give her every virtue under heaven.
There is a professor of natural philosophy now at Naples, of the name of
Amici, from Modena, who has invented a microscope of immense power. The
circulation of the blood in the thigh of a frog (the coldest animal in
nature), when viewed thro' this microscope, appears to take place with the
rapidity of a Swiss torrent.
Since I have been here, I have once more ascended Vesuvius; there was no
eruption at all this time, but I witnessed the sight of a stream of red-hot
liquid lava flowing slowly down the flank of the mountain. It was about two
and a half feet broad.
In my letters from Naples, the last time I was there, I gave you some idea
of the state of society. Among the upper classes gaming is reduced to a
science and is almost exclusively the order of the day.
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