TALBOT1604

Genoa

25 Oct^r 1827

Dear Henry

I find Genoa so delightful I should certainly stop here instead of going to Florence if I was perfectly at liberty it is perfect summer but we have had some tremendous thunderstorms – I like Viviani ¹ very much he seems to have all sorts of information on history, pictures, & languages as well as botany – I have taken some long walks with him to see gardens & frescoes I never should have found out. In one garden which I think equal to any at Naples at Villa Durazzo I found growing in the gravel, the true Colchicum montanum of which I enclose you a specimen – quite different from mine which I shall call Apenninm <sic> if it does not turn out to be a certain C. alpinum of Allioni ². C. montanum has leaves as you see the only other leafy species is one in Sicily of a different aspect to judge from Vs dried specimen – & the curious one I should call mesenderioides or bulbocodioides which I remember in the garden at Oxford & which came from Wilts with green flowers & flowering in Spring look for it at Lacock There is a vernum too somewhere – Viviani knows the green one too – It is a nice little comprehensive genus & with its cousins M. & B. & A. lutea would make a pretty flowerbed – V. has promised me some corsican <sic> plants – he suffers so from his arm I do not wonder he is incapable of doing much.

Pray tell me how Lacock goes on – When the garden is in order & the walls cleared of ancestors you should come to Italy for plants & pictures to stock them I met M^r Irvine at Milan – he told me or rather agreed with me that two most useful sorts of collections were wanting in England & might be made at no great expense & within small compass as to size & numbers. One is that of oil sketches & studies if not of every master of note – at least of every school – there are a set of very good ones of Coreggio ³ selling at Casa Aldrovandi in Bologna – but rather not buying for the prices are enormous, but so far good that they are of his school & very well done – The other sort of collection is that of Gothic & Greek paintings beginning as high up as you can get them & ending with Giotto, Perugino, Francia ⁴, Giambellino ⁵, &c – Two such collections with one specimen of each school in its maturity would be a gallery for a king – It would be the skeleton of a collection of any size. There is a dealer here del Vecchio who lives in one of the prettiest houses in Genoa once the house of the famous Salicetti ⁶ who has some very good things for £1000 each –

The Gov^t is making roads in Sardinia ⁷ at great expence I mean some day to go from Piombino when the Maritima road is finished all the way to the Pyrenees or Barcellona if the coastroad goes so far. A new Narthecium (nanum) has been found in Corsica – a road is to be made from Tenda to Vintimiglia <sic> – another from Oneglia to Ceva – as a substitute for one breakneck road from Savona – The S^t Gothard which is to be the Commercial waggon road will be open in 2 years – & not the least difficult job, wide carriageable streets are to be made thro Genoa in various directions –

Y^r Aff

W F S

V. has given me a Scilla fastigiata which seems new – where did you find Charissa – he does not seem to know it –

Those who want to buy high priced & high polished pictures may go to Marchese Pasqua a Sard – who will give you a dance of muses by Raph– (the famous one at Florence is only a Julio R. ⁸) & other things in proportion –

There is a very nice new promenade making here à la Cassola & a new theatre – did you ever remark the Milanese say duve & avthenticato ⁹ – which is very Greek – they even write bavule, pavura ¹⁰, I had long suspected that to have been the old way from the peculiar pronunciation – Thus Davuria Dauuria Dauria Dahuria and David Davoud Daoud Pasha of Bagdad <sic> Viviani says there is a good deal of Greek in it – I saw in a posthouse in Champagne a caricature which would do for your French scrap book – “Credit est mort!” ¹¹ I think my Colchicum is C. alpinum & yours from Switz^d the same probably from the Piedmontese side it is one of Allioni’s species – I hope you will visit Abbotsbury ¹² this Autumn. I found Bromus distachyus, Blitum prostratum – &c

Inghilterra
H. Talbot Esq^r
31 Sackville Street
London
Lacock Abbey ¹³
Chippenham
Wilts