George Ticknor, Life, letters and journals of George Ticknor
George Hillard, Ed.

[42] having spent a good deal of the day in excellent talk with him, I went to his father's palazzo in town, and dined with him, and with a small and very agreeable party he had invited to meet me. They were Sauli, who manages the affairs of the island of Sardinia; the Abbe Gazzera, a great bibliographer; Count Sclopis,¹ who is engaged in a great work of codification for the whole kingdom; Boucheron, the author of a beautiful Latin life of the Abbe Caluso; Count Cossi, the archivist of the King; and the Marquis Alfieri, a connection of the poet. It was an elegant dinner, in the genuinely Italian style, and the conversation was very animated and various. A part of it turned on the relative domestic character of the Italians and the French, and there was a sharp battle well fought on both sides.

The old Count did not dine with us, but he came into the saloon in the evening, bringing with him several original letters of Franklin, one or two American pamphlets, and other things that he thought it would please me, as an American, to see. The letters of Franklin he inherited with the papers of Beccaria,—the professor of philosophy, not the jurist,—whose favorite pupil the Count was, and who corresponded with Franklin about electricity, etc. The Count is nearly eighty years old, and much broken in his physical strength, but his mind is as clear and active as when I knew him in 1818.

October 5.—I went over the University this morning with the Abbe Gazzera, where I saw nothing worth recollecting, but a good library of 140,000 volumes, with a few curious and beautiful manuscripts. Afterwards I passed a little time with Count Cossi in the archives of the kingdom, but again saw little that was very interesting. . . . The rest of the forenoon we spent in a drive to Count Balbo's villa, finely situated next to that of the Marquis de Barolo; and saw his wife, who seems an agreeable and suitable person for his position and family. I was sorry to part with them, for Count Balbo has really shown himself an old friend ever since we have been in Turin.

Milan, October 7.—The whole morning was spent in different inquiries about the state of the cholera, to all which I obtained most satisfactory answers, so far as the disease itself is concerned, which seems to be fast disappearing from all parts of Italy. . . . . The afternoon I spent in the great cathedral, enjoying the mere general effect of its solemnity, for in this respect I know of no building in Europe that surpasses it. As the twilight closed in, it was grand and impressive