nothing new to your Lordship, and can have no other design in this address than to declare that I am, My Lord, Your Lordship's most obliged, and PREFACE. THERE is certainly no place in the world where a man may travel with greater pleasure and advantage than in Italy. One finds something more particular in the face of the country, and more astonishing in the works of nature, than can be met with in any other part of Europe. It is the great school of music and painting, and contains in it all the noblest productions of statuary and architecture, both ancient and modern. It abounds with cabinets of curiosities, and vast collections of all kinds of antiquities. No other country in the world has such a variety of governments, that are so different in their constitutions, and so refined in their politics. There is scarce any part of the nation that is not famous in history, nor so much as a mountain or river that has not been the scene of some extraordinary action. As there are few men that have talents or opportunities for examining so copious a subject, one may observe, among those who have written on Italy, that different authors have succeeded best on different sorts of curiosities. Some have been more particular in their accounts of pictures, statues, and buildings; some have searched into libraries, cabinets of rarities, and collections of medals, as others have been wholly taken up with inscriptions, ruins, and antiquities. Among the authors of our own country, we are obliged to the Bishop of Salisbury, for his masterly and uncommon observations on the religion and governments of Italy: Lassels may be useful in giving us the names of such writers as have treated of the several states through which he passed: Mr. Ray is to be valued for his observations on the natural productions of the place. Monsieur Misson has wrote a more correct account of Italy in general than any before him, as he particularly excels in the plan of the country, which he has given us in true and lively colours. |