grapes, and pressed my owne wine, which proved incomparable liquor.

This was on 10 Oct. Soon after came to visite me from Venice Mr. Henry Howard, grandchild to ye Earle of Arundel, Mr. Bramstone, son to ye Lord Cheif Justice, and Mr. Henshaw, with whom I went to another part of ye citty to lodge neere St. Catherine's, over against the monasterie of nunns, where we hired the whole house and lived very nobly. Here I learned to play on ye theorba, taught by Sig. Dominico Bassano, who had a daughter married to a doctor of laws, that played and sung to nine severall instruments, with that skill and addresse as few masters in Italy exceeded her; she likewise compos'd divers excellent pieces. I had never seene any play on the Naples viol before. She presented me afterwards with two recitativos of hers, both words and musiq.

Oct. 31st. Being my birth-day, the nunns of St. Catharine's sent me flowers of silk-work. We were very studious all this winter till Christmas, when on twelfth day we invited all the English and Scotts in towne to a feast, which sunk our excellent wine considerably.

1645-46. In January, Sign. Molino was chosen Doge of Venice, but the extreame snow that fell, and the cold, hindered my going to see the solemnity, so as I stirred not from Padoa till Shrovetide, when all the world repair to Venice to see the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall; the women, men, and persons of all conditions disguising themselves in antiq dresses, with extravagant musiq and a thousand gambols, traversing the streetes from house to house, all places being then accessible and free to enter. Abroad, they fling eggs fill'd with sweete water, but sometimes not over sweete. They also have a barbarous costome of hunting bulls about ye streetes