On The Right Hand Side Of The Corsia De' Servi,
Proceeding From The Cathedral, Are The Finest Buildings (Houses Of
Individuals) In Milan, Among Which I Particularly Distinguished A Superb
Palace Built In The Best Grecian Taste With A Colonnaded Portico,
Surmounted By Eight Columns.
Just outside the Porta Orientale is the
Corso, with a fine spacious road with Allees on each side lined with
trees.
The Corso forms the evening drive and promenade a cheval of the
beau monde. I have seen nowhere, except in Hyde Park, such a brilliant
show of equipages as on the Corso of Milan. I observe that the women
display a great luxe de parure at this promenade.
The women here appear to me in general handsome, and report says not at all
cruel. They have quite a fureur for dress and ornaments, hi the adapting
of which, however, they have not so much taste as the French women have.
The Milanese women do not understand the simplicite recherchee in their
attire, and are too fond of glaring colours. The Milanese women are accused
of being too fond of wine, and a calculation has been made that two bottles
per diem are drank by each female in Milan; but, supposing this
calculation were true, let not the English be startled, for the wine of
this, country is exceedingly light, lighter indeed than the weakest
Burgundy wine; indeed, I conceive that two bottles of Lombard wine are
scarce equivalent in strength to four wine glasses of Port wine. The
Lombards for this reason never drink water with their wine; and indeed it
is not necessary, for I am afraid that all the wine drank in Milan is
already baptised before it leaves the hands of the vendor, except that
reserved for the priesthood; such, at any rate, was the case before the
French Revolution, and no doubt the wine sellers would oppose the abolition
of so ancient and sacred a custom. The Milanese are a gay people,
hospitable and fond of pleasure: they are more addicted to the pleasures of
the table than the other people of Italy, and dinner parties are in
consequence much more frequent here than in other Italian towns. The women
here are said to be much better educated than in the rest of Italy, for
Napoleon took great pains to promote and encourage female instruction, well
knowing that to be the best means of regenerating a country.
The dialect spoken in the Milanese has a harsh nasal accent, to my ear
peculiarly disagreeable. Pure Italian or Tuscan is little spoken here, and
that only to foreigners. French, on the contrary, is spoken a good deal;
but the Milanese, male and female, among one another, speak invariably the
patois of the country, which has more analogy to the French than to the
Italian, but without the grace or euphony of either.
I have visited likewise the Zecca, or Mint, where I observed the whole
process of coining. They still continue to coin here Napoleons of gold and
silver, with the date of 1814, and they coin likewise crowns or dollars
with Maria Theresa's head, with the date of the last year of her reign.
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