_Oct._ 16, 1786. _Early and on board the packet._
My travelling companions, male and female alike, are all still fast asleep in their berths. For my part I have passed the two nights on deck, wrapped up in my cloak. It was only towards morning that I felt it at all cold. I am now actually in latitude forty-five, and yet go on repeating my old song: I would gladly leave all to the inhabitants of the land, if only, after the fashion of Dido, I could enclose enough of the heavens to surround our dwellings with. It would then be quite another state of existence. The voyage in this glorious weather has been most delightful, the views and prospects simple but agreeable. The Po, with its fertilizing stream, flows here through wide plains; nothing, however, is to be seen but its banks covered with trees or bushes;--you catch no distant view. On this river, as on the Adige, are silly water-works, which are as rude and ill-constructed as those on the Saal.
Although I only arrived here early this morning (by 7 o'clock, German time), I am thinking of setting off again to-morrow morning. For the first time since I left home, a feeling of dissatisfaction has fallen upon me in this great and beautiful, but flat and depopulated city. These streets, now so desolate, were, however, once kept in animation by a brilliant court. Here dwelt Ariosto discontented, and Tasso unhappy, and so, we fancy, we gain edification by visiting such scenes. Ariosto's monument contains much marble--ill arranged; for Tasso's prison, they shew you a wood-house or coalhouse where, most assuredly, he never was kept. Moreover, the people pretend to know scarcely anything you may ask about. But at last for "something to drink" they manage to remember. All this brings to my mind Luther's ink-spots, which the housekeeper freshens up from time to time. Most travellers, however, are little better than our "_Handwerksburschen_" or stolling journeymen, and content themselves with such palpable signs. For my part I became quite sulky, and took little interest even in a beautiful institute and academy, which a cardinal, a native of Ferrara, founded and endowed; however, some ancient monuments, in the Ducal Palace, served to revive me a little; and I was put in perfect good humor by a beautiful conception of a painter, John the Baptist before Herod and Herodias. The prophet, in his well-known dress of the wilderness, is pointing indignantly at Herodias. Quite unmoved, she looks at the prince, who is sitting by her side, while the latter regards the prophet with a calm but cunning look; a white middle-sized greyhound stands before the king, while from beneath the robe of Herodias, a small Italian one is peeping--both giving tongue at the prophet. To my mind, this is a most happy thought.