"It seems that, just at this moment (as Lydia Languish says), there will be no elopement after all. I wish that I had known as much last night--or, rather, this morning--I should have gone to bed two hours earlier. And yet I ought not to complain; for, though it is a sirocco, and heavy rain, I have not _yawned_ for these two days.
"Came home--read History of Greece--before dinner had read Walter Scott's Rob Roy. Wrote address to the letter in answer to Alessio del Pinto, who has thanked me for helping his brother (the late Commandant, murdered here last month) in his last moments. Have told him I only did a duty of humanity--as is true. The brother lives at Rome.
"Mended the fire with some 'sgobole' (a Romagnuole word), and gave the falcon some water. Drank some Seltzer-water. Mem.--received to-day a print, or etching, of the story of Ugolino, by an Italian painter--different, of course, from Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and I think (as far as recollection goes) _no worse_, for Reynolds's is not good in history. Tore a button in my new coat.
"I wonder what figure these Italians will make in a regular row. I sometimes think that, like the Irishman's gun (somebody had sold him a crooked one), they will only do for 'shooting round a corner;' at least, this sort of shooting has been the late tenor of their exploits. And yet, there are materials in this people, and a noble energy, if well directed. But who is to direct them? No matter. Out of such times heroes spring. Difficulties are the hotbeds of high spirits, and Freedom the mother of the few virtues incident to human nature.
"Rose--the day fine. Ordered the horses; but Lega (my _secretary_, an Italianism for steward or chief servant) coming to tell me that the painter had finished the work in fresco, for the room he has been employed on lately, I went to see it before I set out. The painter has not copied badly the prints from Titian, &c. considering all things.
"Dined. Read Johnson's 'Vanity of Human Wishes,'--all the examples and mode of giving them sublime, as well as the latter part, with the exception of an occasional couplet. I do not so much admire the opening. I remember an observation of Sharpe's, (the _Conversationist_, as he was called in London, and a very clever man,) that the first line of this poem was superfluous, and that Pope (the best of poets, _I_ think) would have begun at once, only changing the punctuation--