THE REV. DR. JOHN WARNER.

DR. JOHN WARNER (the contributor of many of the most agreeable letters in the present collection) was the son of the Rev. Dr. Ferdinando Warner, for many years rector of Barnes, in Surrey, and author of a history of Ireland. Dr. John Warner was born in 1736, and was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge. For many years he preached at a chapel, his own property, in Long Acre, where he attained a considerable share of popularity by the pleasing, manly, and eloquent style of his delivery. In 1771 he obtained the united rectories of Hockliffe and Chalgrave in Bedfordshire, and, some time afterward, was presented by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., to the valuable rectory of Stourton, in Wiltshire. He was also chaplain to Earl Gower, during his embassy at Paris in 1790. The reputation for wit, which Doctor Warner enjoyed among his contemporaries, will be found to be fully borne out by his agreeable letters; although, on the other hand, it must be admitted that his language and sentiments are not always strictly in character with his sacred profession. He is said, however, to have been a man of the strictest integrity; to have been of a kind and charitable disposition; and to have been warm and even enthusiastic in his friendships. He was an ardent admirer of the celebrated John Howard, and it is said to have been principally

owing to Doctor Warner's exertions that the wellknown statue in St. Paul's Cathedral was erected to the memory of the amiable philanthropist. "His attachment to literature was unbounded; he was moderate to an extreme at the table, and equally abstemious at the bottle: a book, a pipe, and cheerful conversation, in which he eminently excelled, were his supreme delight."

Doctor Warner was the author of several miscellaneous papers, which are now forgotten. He was, however, unquestionably an excellent scholar; his tastes were essentially literary, and his conversation is said to have been eminently entertaining. At the commencement of the French Revolution, -enamoured with the doctrines of universal freedom, benevolence, and good will, which were then loudly vaunted by the disciples of republicanism, -he hastened to France to enjoy the promised Utopia. The sickening scenes of blood and horror, however, which polluted the dawn of freedom in France, are said to have speedily disgusted him with his new associates, and he gladly returned to enjoy real liberty at home. Doctor Warner died in St. John's Square, Clerkenwell, on the 22d of January, 1800, at the age of sixty-four.

The Rev. Dr. John Warner to George Selwyn.

PADUA, Saturday night [August, 1778]. DEAR SIR :-- I am just now arrived at this quiet place, and have only had time to take a little walk

into it; in which, however, I was struck with the singular appearance of a number of ladies who mixed with the men at the coffee-houses; ladies who, one might imagine, conforming to the character of their city, Padoua la Detta, dress the inside of their heads; for, as to the outside, they still adhere to the modest mode in which our mothers coiffed themselves, scorning the revived foppery inveighed against by Juvenal, tot compagibus altum ædificare caput.

I have passed through a glorious country, which seems to want nothing but human creatures. This afternoon the air has been cooled by a magnificent storm, sweeping from west to east, so that I am in hopes you had it first. There, was a report upon the road, that a courier had passed, with the news of an accommodation between the emperor and the King of Prussia. Verona and Vicenza have each one very fine thing, of the same name but of different kinds, — their theatres; but both the cities, in decay and melancholy, seem to be mourning the splendour they were witness to in the time of the Roman greatness, and again in the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, before Vasco de Gama' destroyed the Venetian commerce. Can they reasonably expect to lift their heads a third time?

'Vasco de Gama, the celebrated Portuguese admiral, and the founder of the Portuguese settlements in India, died at Cochin, in 1525.

1

I am prepared to find more of this decay and melancholy here. Part of the walls of this town, now standing, were built, they say, four hundred years before the foundation of Rome, by Antenor." Though I am at the principal inn, in the middle of the city, everything around me is as quiet as the mansion to which the man was carried in the monk's habit. So much stillness invites to sleep, so I heartily wish you a good night. I write only from the flattering idea that it might not be quite indifferent to you to know how I went on, and again from the flattering idea that I am copying your example, who are continually writing to your friends. But, "O!..could I flow like thee," as Sir John Denham says, and make thy stream my great example," I.should sit down to it with a much better appetite. I shall see Mr. Minifie's Count Stratico to-morrow morning. His Excellency's man at Verona was very civil.

I am, dear sir, your most obliged and faithful servant,

JOHN WARNER.

The Rev. Doctor Warner to George Selwyn.

PADUA, Sunday night.

Oh, sir, you must come to Padua! There are a thousand things worth seeing, and I think there

'There is a legend that, after the destruction of Troy, Antenor migrated to Italy, and landing on the shores of the Adriatic, founded the town of Padua. 2 Denham's Cooper's Hill.

would be good society found in it. I am much pleased with it. The grass, indeed, grows in the streets, but perhaps I like it the better for that reason; for how does one curse the unruly rabble of Milan, which, though much thinner than they say they were formerly, are multitudinous in comparison of what they are here, where apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto, and as there is no collision there is no noise. Besides, Rousseau, I believe, was right when he said the breath of man, in too great a degree, is hurtful to his like, literally and figuratively.

I have made an acquaintance with a man I like very much (which I cannot say of any other Italian), Don André Zaramellini, a Benedictine of the great convent of St. Justina,' who, it seems, is of a good Venetian family. Without a book which he gave me (though I was furnished with two books of travels through Padua), I should have lost seeing the three, perhaps, most curious things in the place the paintings in fresco of Giotto, and

'The church of St. Justina at Padua is celebrated for its beautiful mosaic pavement.

2 Giotto, the second reviver of painting in Italy, was the son of a peasant named Bondone, and was born in 1276, in the district of Vespigniano, near Florence. The circumstance which drew him from obscurity is worthy of being recorded. The celebrated John Cimabue, to whom the Italians are indebted for the revival of painting in their country, observing him draw some figures on the ground while tending his sheep, carried him with him to Florence, and carefully instructed him in his art. The pupil speedily surpassed his master, and his fame soon spread