When at work, or when they bring their goods to market, their hair is confined by a filk net, which is alfo much worn at Naples; but on holidays they drefs in a very picturesque manner. They do not wear gowns, but a kind of jacket without fleeves. They have no other covering for the upper part of the arm but their shift fleeves, which are tied with riband. Their petticoats are generally of a fcarlet colour. They wear ear-rings and necklaces. Their hair is adjusted in a becoming manner, and adorned with flowers. Above one ear they fix a little ftraw hat; and on the whole have a more gay, fmart, coquetish air, than any country-girls I ever faw.

Churches, and palaces, and ftatues, 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 tafte is not general; but, I thank God, I know fome

people who, to a perfect knowledge and unaffected love of the fine arts, join a pasfion for a collection of this kind, who cannot, without uneafiness, see one face in a different style, and whofe lives and fortunes are employed in smoothing the corrofions of penury and misfortune, and restoring the original air of fatisfaction and cheerfulness to the human countenance. Happy the people whofe Sovereign is infpired with this fpecies of virtù!

LETTER LXXI.

Florence.

I

HAVE generally, fince our arrival at Florence, paffed two hours every forenoon in the famous gallery. Connoiffeurs, and those who wish to be thought fuch, remain much longer. But I plainly feel this is enough for me; and I do not think it worth while to prolong my visit after I begin to be tired, merely to be thought what I am not. Do not imagine, however, that I am blind to the beauties of this celebrated collection; by far the most valuable now in the world.

One of the most interefting parts of it, in the eyes of many, is the feries of Roman Emperors, from Julius Cæfar to Gallienus, with a confiderable number of their Empreffes, arranged oppofite to them. This series is almost complete; but wherever the

buft of an Emperor is wanting, the place is filled up by that of fome other diftinguished Roman. Such an honour is beftowed with great propriety on Seneca, Cicero, or Agrippa, the fon-in-law of Auguftus. But, on perceiving a head of Antinous, the favourite of Adrian, among them, a gentleman whispered me,—that minion, pointing to the head, would not have been admitted into fuch company any where but in Florence. It ought, however, to be remembered, that the Gallery is not an Egyptian court of judicature, where Princes are tried, after death, for crimes committed during their life. If the vices of originals had excluded their portraits, what would have become of the feries of Roman Emperors, and particularly of the bust of the great Julius himself, who was husband to all the wives and

The gallery is facred to art, and every production which the avows, has a right to a place here.

Amidft those noble fpecimens of ancient fculpture, fome of the works of Michael Angelo are not thought undeferving a place. His Bacchus and Faunus, of which the well-known ftory is told, have been by fome preferred to the two antique figures representing the same.

The beautiful head of Alexander is univerfally admired by all the virtuofi; though they differ in opinion with regard to the circumstance in which the sculptor has intended to represent that hero. Some imagine he is dying; Mr. Addison imagines he fighs for new worlds to conquer ; others that he faints with pain and lofs of blood from the wounds he received at Oxydrace, Others think the features express not bodily pain or languor, but forrow and remorse, for having murdered his faithful friend Clitus. You fee how very uncertain a bufinefs this of a virtuofo is. I can hardly believe that the artist intended fimply to represent him dying; there was nothing