A Sketch of a Tour on the Continent Author:James Edward Smith Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: C HAP. XXIII. THE CARNIVAL—MASQUERADE—THEATRES—MUSEUMS OF NATURAL HISTORY — LITERATI — PLANTS IN FLOWER. T. HE Carnival is no where feen to greater ... more »advantage than at Rome; and though fo many travellers have mentioned it, more or lefs particularly, that a full defcription is un- necefiary, no one who has feen it can be expected to be wholly filent on the fubjedl, and not to delight in dwelling a little oa thofe celebrated fcenes, and that mdtley company,-of which he can fay quorum parsfui. This entertainment lafts here but nine days, Sundays excluded. And even on thofe nine days mafks are allowed to be worn for only three or four hours in the afternoon. -Its firft beginning was on the afternoon of Saturday,Saturday, February loth ; the fcene of di- verfion being the Corfo, the principal ftreet of the city, which runs from the Piazza del Popolo in a ftraight line almoft up to the Capitol, which indeed ought to be laid open to it. Englifhmen very generally pronounce the name of this ftreet as. we do corfe, and when fo pronounced, it actually means a Corfican, which founds very ridiculous to a Roman ; the true pronunciation /of its firft fyllable is like our word coarfe. This remark is fuperfluous to thofe who know Italian, but I write it for thofe who do not. The middle part of this ftreet, which unluckily is not a very wide one, is, in Carnival time, occupied by three rows of coaches all in proceffion ; thofe which compofe the two outermoft going up one fide and down the other, and fo making a continual circuit, as in Hyde Park. The central row is com- pofed of the coaches of fovereign princes, and, I believe, cardinals ; at leaft the fplendid equipage of the prefent pope's nephew always moved in that line, but whether in conference of his rank as cardinal, or ...« less