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LIFE OF GRAY.
vii

they took a short excursion to Geneva, over the mountains of Savoy; and by Turin, Genoa, and Bologna to Florence. There they passed the winter in the company of Mr. Horace Mann, the envoy at that court.[1] In March, 1740, Clement the Twelfth, then Pope, died; and they hastened their journey to Rome, in the hope of seeing the installation of his successor.[2] That Gray would have wished to have extended his travels, and enlarged his prospect beyond these narrow limits, if he had possessed the power, we know from his subsequent advice to a friend who was commencing his travels: "Tritum viatorum compitum calca, et, cum poteris, desere." And the following passage sketches the outline of an Italian tour, which, I believe, few of our travellers have ever completed: "I conclude, when the winter is over, and you have seen Rome and Naples, you will strike out of the beaten path of English travellers, and see a little of the country. Throw yourselves into the bosom of the Apennine; survey the horrid lake of Amsanctus; catch the breezes on the coast of Taranto and Salerno; expatiate to the very toe of the continent; perhaps strike over the faro of Messina; and having measured the gigantic columns of Girgenti and the

  1. ↑ See Walpole's Works, vol. iv. p. 423. Sir Horace Mann died in 1786 at Florence, where he had resided fortysix years as his Britannic Majesty's minister, at the Court of the Grand Duke.
  2. ↑ Ibid. p. 440.
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