Daily quote by Italy

• Throughout all Italy beside,
  What does one find, but Want and Pride?
  Farces of Superstitious folly,
  Decay, Distress and Melancholy:
  The Havock of Despotick Power,
  A Country rich, its owners poor;
  Unpeopled towns, and Lands untilled,
  Bodys uncloathed, and mouths unfilled.
  The nobles miserably great,
  In painted Domes and empty state,
  Too proud to work, too poor to eat,
  No arts the meaner sort employ,
  They nought approve, nor ought enjoy.
  Each blown from misery grows a Saint,
  He prays from Idleness and fast from Want.
  • John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey (1729), quoted in Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour, (1985), p. 174