MILAN, the capital of the duchy of that name, in Latin Mediolanum, is a very large city, and has a wall and rampart round it, with a citadel; yet is thought to be incapable of making any great resistance. The gardens within the city take up a great deal of ground. In the citadel is a foundry for cannon, and an arsenal furnished with arms for 12,000 men. The governor of it is quite independent of the governor-general of the Milanese, who resides in the city, in a large, but old and ill-construed palace. The yearly income of the governor of Milan is said to be 200,000 guilders. The council belonging to the city is composed of a president and 60 doctors of law, who are all nobles, and independent of the governor-general. Milan hath experienced a great variety of fortune, having been subject sometimes to the French, sometimes to the Spaniards, and sometimes to the Germans. A great number of persons of rank and fortune live in it, especially during the winter. The ladies in France are not allowed more liberty than those of this city: even the austerities of the monastic life are so far mitigated here, that gentlemen have not only the liberty of talking with the nuns, and of rallying and laughing at the grate, but also of joining with them in concerts of music, and of spending whole afternoons in their company. The place where the beau monde take the air, either in their coaches or on foot, is the rampart betwixt the Porta Orientale, and the Porta Tosa, where it is straight and broad, and extremely pleasant, being planted with white mulberry-trees, and commanding a prospect on one side of the open country, and on the other of the gardens and vineyards between the ramparts and the city. Milan, which is said to have been built by the Gauls about 200 years after the foundation of Rome, contains a great number of stately edifices, as churches, convents, palaces, and hospitals. The cathedral is a vast pile, all of marble; and though something has been doing for near 400 years towards the outward or inward ornament thereof, it is not yet finished. Of the great number of statues about it, that of St Bartholomew, just dead alive, with his skin hanging over his shoulders, and of Adam and Eve, over the main portal, are the finest. The pillars supporting the roof of the church are all of marble, and the windows finely painted. This church contains a treasure of great value, particularly a shrine of rock-crystal, in which the body of St Charles Borromeo is deposited. The other churches most worthy
a stranger's notice are those of St Alexander, St Jerome, St Giovanni di Casarotti della Passione, that of the Jesuits, and of St Ambrose, in which lie the bodies of the saint, and of the kings Pepin and Bernard. In the Ambrosian college, founded by Frederic Borromeo, 16 professors teach gratis. In the same college is also an academy of painting, with a museum, and a library, containing a vast number of printed books and manuscripts; among the last of which is a translation of Josephus's History of the Jews, done by Rufinus about 1200 years ago, and written on the bark of a tree; St Ambrose's works on vellum, finely illuminated; the orations of Gregory Nazianzen, and the works of Virgil, in folio, with Petrarch's notes. In the museum are Leonardi da Vinci's mathematical and mechanical drawings, in 12 large volumes. The seminary for sciences, the college of the nobles, the Helvetian college, and the mathematical academy, are noble foundations, and stately buildings. Of the hospitals, the most remarkable are the Lazaretto, and that called the great hospital; the latter of which receives sick persons, foundlings, and lunatics, and has six smaller hospitals depending on it, with a revenue of 100,000 rixdollars. The number of the inhabitants of this city is said to be about 250,000. It has been 40 times besieged, taken 20 times, and four times almost entirely demolished; yet it hath always recovered itself. It is said that gunpowder is sold here only by one person, and in one place. The court of inquisition is held in the Dominican convent, near the church of Madonna della Gratia. The houses of entertainment, and the ordinaries here, are represented as very indifferent. Mr Keyser says, it is not unusual for young travellers, when they go to any of the taverns in Milan, to be asked, "whether they choose a letto fornito, or female bed-fellow," who continues masked till she enters the bed-chamber. Deformed dwarfs, and people with wens, some of them of a prodigious size, are very common in the streets of Milan. The wens are said to be hereditary. The common method of burying here is, to throw the corpses into vaults, without coffins, to the amount of two or three hundred, which cannot fail to fill the air in these places with noxious effluvia. Mr Keyser tells us, that when he was at Milan, goods of any kind might have been brought into the city without search or inquiry, provided a small gratuity was given to the officer. Milan is far short of Turin both in beauty and conveniency, many of the streets being crooked and narrow, and paper-windows much more frequent than in that city; even in grand palaces, the windows are often composed promiscuously of glass and paper. It is not uncommon here for beggars, when they ask alms, to hold out to you a dish, in which is a human skull. Two large canals extend from hence, the one to the Tessino, and the other to the Adda; the Tessino having a communication with the Lago Maggiore, and, by a canal, with the Sesia; and the Adda issuing from the Lago di Como, and having a communication by canals with the Lambro and Serio. In a void space in one of the streets of Milan, where stood the house of a barber who had conspired with the commissary of health to poison his fellow-citizens, is erected a pillar called Colonna Infame, with an inscription to perpetuate the memory of
Milboro, of the execrable design. The environs of this city
Mildew. are very pleasant, being adorned with beautiful seats,
gardens, orchards, &c. About two Italian miles
from it, at the seat of the Simonetti family, is a build-
ing, that would have been a master-piece of its kind
had the architect designed it for an artificial echo. It
will return or repeat the report of a pistol above 60
times; and any single musical instrument, well touched,
will have the same effect as a great number of instru-
ments, and produce a most surprising and delightful
concert. E. Long. 15. 35. N. Lat. 38. 32.