LETTER LXXIX.

Chamberry.

E made fo fhort a ftay at Turin that

WI did not think of writing from

thence. I fhall now give you a sketch of our progress fince my laft.

We left Milan at midnight, and arrived the next evening at Turin before the fhutting of the gates. All the approaches to that city are magnificent. It is fituated at the bottom of the Alps, in a fine plain watered by the Po. Moft of the streets are well built, uniform, clean, ftraight, and terminating on fome agreeable object. The Strada di Po, leading to the palace, the finest and largest in the city, is adorned with porticoes equally beautiful and convenient. The four gates are alfo highly ornamental. There can be no more agreeable walk than that around the ramparts.

ramparts. The fortifications are regular and in good repair, and the citadel is reckoned one of the ftrongeft in Europe. The royal palace and the gardens are admired by fome. The apartments display neatness rather than magnificence. The rooms are small, but numerous. The furniture is rich and elegant; even the floors attract attention, and must peculiarly strike ftrangers who come from Rome and Bologna; they are curiously inlaid with various kinds of wood, and kept always in a ftate of fhining brightnefs. The pictures, ftatues, and antiquities in the palace are of great value; of the former there are fome by the greatest masters, but those of the Flemish school predominate.

No royal family in Europe are more rigid obfervers of the laws of etiquette than that of Sardinia; all their movements are uniform and invariable. The hour of rifing, of going to mafs, of taking the air; every thing is regulated like

clock

clock-work. Those illuftrious perfons muft have a vast fund of natural good-humour, to enable them to perfevere in fuch a wearisome routine, and support their spirits under fuch a continued weight of oppreffive formality.

We had the fatisfaction of seeing them all at mass; but as the Duke of Hamilton grows more impatient to get to England the nearer we approach it, he declined being prefented at court, and we left Turin two days after our arrival.

We stopped a few hours, during the heat of the day, at a small village, called St. Ambrofe, two or three pofts from Turin. I never experienced more intense heat than during this day, while we were tantalized with a view of the fnow on the top of the Alps, which feem to overhang this place, though, in reality, they are fome leagues diftant. While we remained at St. Ambrofe there was a grand proceffion. All the men, women, and children,

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dren, who were able to crawl, attended; feveral old women carried crucifixes, others pictures of the faint, or flags fixed to the ends of long poles; they feemed to have fome difficulty in wielding them, yet the. good old women tottered along as happy as fo many young enfigns the first time they bend under the regimental colours. Four men, carrying a box upon their fhoulders, walked before the reft. I asked what the box contained, and was informed by a fagacious looking old man, that it contained the bones of St. John. I enquired if all the Saint's bones were there; he affured me, that not even a joint of his little finger was wanting; "Because," continued I, "I have feen a confiderable "number of bones in different parts of

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Italy, which are faid to be the bones of "St. John." He smiled at my fimplicity, and faid the world was full of imposition; but nothing could be more certain, than that those in the box were the true bones of the Saint; he had remembered them

ever fince he was a child-and his father, when on his death-bed, had told him, on the word of a dying man, That they belonged to St. John and no other body.

At Novalezza, a village at the bottom of Mount Cenis, our carriages were taken to pieces, and delivered to muleteers to be carried to Lanebourg. I had bargained with the Vitturino, before we left Turin, for our paffage over the mountain in the chairs commonly used on fuch occafions. The fellow had informed us there was no poffibility of going in any other manner; but when we came to this place, I saw no difficulty in being carried up by mules, which we all preferred, to the great fatisfaction of our knavish conductor, who thereby faved the expence of one half the chairmen, for whofe labour he was already paid.

We rode up this mountain, which has been described in fuch formidable terms, with great ease. At the top there is a