from Letters During the Course of a Tour Through Germany, Switzerland, and Italy ... by Rev. Robert Gray, Oct. 31, 1791

From Lodi we went by Zorliscona, three posts, to Placentia, having crossed the Po, before our arrival, on a moving bridge of boats. The country in the neighbourhood of the Po, which is part of what was anciently the most flourishing side of Italy, and which still retains its reputation for fertility, appears now squalid and miserable in consequence of the late overflowing of that river, which spread devastation wherever it went,

and,

"With a sudden and impetuous wave,
"Like profuse kings, resumed the wealth it gave." *

Placentia boasts of an higher antiquity than of Rome itself. ... It is avery handsome town, though its present appearance reminds us of its decay: it swarms with beggars, the cause and appendage of idleness and poverty. ... At Placentia we wished to have proceeded by a voiturier, as we could have travelled at much less expence; but were told, that we must go off by the post as we arrived by it, unless we chose to stay three days at Placentia; such, it seems, is the regulation.

* from Cooper's Hill poem by John Denham