This is the reason why he has never excelled in dramatic music. Without melancholy, there can be no impassioned music; and, for this cause, the French people, lively, vain, and light, expressing with quickness all their sentiments, sometimes oppressed with ennui, but never melancholic, will never have any music.

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Now we are upon the subject, and that I see you already beginning to scowl, I will tell you the whole of my mind. I shall purposely make use of the most common and intelligible images; and I invite all my brother manufacturers of paradoxes, to follow the same plan.

LETTER VII.

Vienna, October 3, 1808.

I ONCE entered Italy by the Simplon, in company with a gentleman who had never made this tour; and, as we passed within a quarter of a league of the Borromean isles, I was glad to have an opportunity of shewing them to him. We took a boat, and traversed the gardens of this magnificent, and, at the same time, interesting, place. We afterwards returned to the little inn of the Isola bella, where we found three covers set on the table, and a young Milanese, whose exterior announced an easy fortune, after a few compliments, came and sat down by the side of us. He made very pertinent replies to the questions which I addressed to him. While he was engaged in cutting up a partridge, my friend

drew a letter from his pocket, and pretending to read it, said to me in English: "Look at that young man he has, no doubt, committed some crime which haunts his conscience; he takes us for policeofficers; or he is some Werter, who has selected this celebrated place to put an end to his existence in a sentimental style."

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By no means," replied I; "he is one of the most communicative young men we shall meet with, nay, he may even be considered as lively."

All the French, who visit Italy, fall into the same error, arising from the melancholic cast of the Italian character. It is a country in which the passions spring with the greatest facility. Men of such a character can scarcely find amusement, except in the fine arts; and it is thus, I think, that Italy has produced both its great artists, and their admirers; who, by their fondness for the former, and by rewarding their labours, have caused them to arise. It is not that the Italian is incapable of gaiety; see him in a party of pleasure

in the country, with agreeable women, his spirits are wild; his imagination is of a surprising vivacity.

I have never, in Italy, fallen into those parties of pleasure, which the slightest mortification of vanity renders sometimes so stupid, in the beautiful parks which surround Paris. Some freezing mortal comes and cuts up all our amusement; the master of the house is out of humour, because his cook is not punctual with the dinner. I am piqued, because the Viscount V, abusing the speed of his English horses, has pushed by me in his. curricle, in the plains of St. Gratien, and has covered with dust the ladies who were in my handsome new chariot; but I will have my revenge on him, or my coachman shall have his dismissal. None of these ideas ever enter the head of a young Italian, going to receive ladies at his villa. Do you remember to have read Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice? If you recollect, where Gratiano says,

"Let me play the fool:

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come," &c.

This is Italian gaiety; it is gaiety which announces happiness. With us, it would almost be accounted ill manners; it would be displaying one's own happiness, and would be deemed egotistical. French gaiety must shew the company that it is gay only to please them; it is necessary, in personating extreme joy, to conceal the real joy, which is caused by success.

French gaiety requires a great deal of wit: it is that of Le Sage and of Gil Blas. Italian gaiety is founded in sensibility; so that when nothing particularly pleases him, the Italian is not gay.

Our young man, at the Borromean isles, saw nothing so very delightful in meeting with two well-educated Frenchmen at a public table; he was polite: we expected him to have been amusing.

In Italy, as the actions of men arise more from the mind of the actor, when this mind is of a common sort, an Italian is the most insipid companion in the world. I was one day complaining of this to the worthy Baron W--: "What would you have?" said he; "there is the