and like able generals, make up for the lofs of one fortrefs, by the taking of an other. However, female licentiousness has by no means come to fuch a height as in Italy. We have seen a greal deal of domeftic happiness; husbands and wives that truly love one another, and whose mutual care and pleasure is the education of their children. I could name a number: The Duke of Verdura, the Prince Partana, the Count Buscemi, and many others who live in the most facred union. Such fights are very rare on the continent. But indeed the ftile that young people are brought up in here, feems to lay a much more folid foundation for matrimonial happiness, than either in France or Italy. The young ladies are not shut up in convents till the day of their marriage, but for the most part live in the house with their parents, where they receive their education, and are every day in company with their friends and relations. From what I can obferve, I think they are allowed almost as much liberty as with us. In their great assemblies, we often see a club of young people (of both fexes) get together in a corner, and amufe themselves for hours, at cross purposes, or fuch like games, without the mothers being under the leaft anxiety; indeed, we fometimes join in these little parties, and find them extremely entertaining. In general, they are quick and lively, and have a number of those jeux d'esprit, which I think must ever be a proof, in all countries, of the familiar intercourse betwixt the young

people of the two fexes; for all these games are infipid, if they are not seasoned by fomething of that invifible and fubtile agency, which renders every thing more interesting in these mixed focieties, than in the lifelefs ones, compofed of only one part of the fpecies. Thus, in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, I have never seen any of these games; in France feldom, but in Switzerland, (where the greatest liberty and familiarity are enjoyed amongst the young people) they are numberlefs.But the converfation hour is arrived, and our carriage is waiting.

Adieu.

LETTER XXIV.

Palermo, June 28th.

THERE are two fmall countries,

one to the east, the other to the west of this city, where the principal nobility have their country palaces. Both these we have visited; there are many noble houses in each of them. That to the east is called La Bagaria, that to the west II Colle. We are this instant returned from La Bagaria, and I hasten to give you an account of the ridiculous things we have seen, though perhaps you will not thank me for it.

The palace of the Prince of Valguanera is, I think, by much the finest and most beautiful of all the houses of the Bagaria; but it is far from being the most extraordinary: were I to describe it, I should only tell you of things you have often feen and heard of in other countries, fo I fhall only speak of one, which, for its fingularity, certainly is not to be paralleled on the face of the earth; it belongs to the prince of P, a man of immense fortune, who has devoted his whole life to the study of monsters and chimeras, greater and more ridiculous than ever entered into the imagination of the wildeft writers of romance or knight-errantry.

The amazing crowd of statues that surround his house, appear at a distance like a little army drawn up for its defence; but when you get amongst them, and every one affumes his true likeness, you imagine you have got into the regions of delufion and enchantment; for of all that immense group, there is not one made to represent any object in nature; nor is the absurdity of the wretched imagination that created them lefs aftonishing than its wonderful fertility. It would require a volume to describe the whole, and a fad volume indeed it would make. He has put the heads of men to the bodies of every fort of animal, and the heads of every other animal to the bodies of men. Sometimes he makes a compound of five or fix animals that have no fort of refemblance in nature. He puts the head of a lion to the neck of a goose, the body of a lizard, the legs of a goat, the tail of a fox. On the back of this monster, he puts another if poffible still more hideous, with five or fix heads, and a bufh of horns, that beats the beast in the Revelations all to nothing. There is no kind of horn in the world that he has not collected; and his pleasure is, to see them all flourishing upon the same head. This is a strange species of madness; and it is truly unaccountable that he has not been shut many years ago; but he is perfectly innocent, and troubles nobody by the indulgence of his phrenzy; on the contrary, he gives bread to a number of ftatuaries and other workmen, whom

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he rewards in proportion as they can bring their imaginations to coincide with his own; or, in other words, according to the hideoufnefs of the monsters they produce. It would be idle and tiresome to be particular in an account of thefe abfurdities. The ftatues that adorn, or rather deform the great avenue, and furround the court of the palace, amount already to 600, notwithstanding which, it may be truly said, that he has not broke the second commandment; for of all that number, there is not the likeness of any thing in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. 'The old ornaments which were put up by his father, who was a fenfible man, appear to have been in a good taste.. They have all been knocked to pieces, and laid together in a heap, to make room for this new creation..

The infide of this inchanted castle corresponds exactly with the out; it is in every respect as whimsical and fantastical, and you cannot turn. yourself to any fide, where you are not stared in. the face by fome hideous figure or other. Some of the apartments are fpacious and magnificent, with high arched roofs; which instead of plaister or ftucco, are compofed entirely of large mirrors, nicely joined together. The effect that these produce (as each of them make a small angle with the other,) is exactly that of a multiplying glass, so that when three or four people are walking below, there is always the appearance of three