which any record of the masters of the Roman world inspired me in those days; and when I saw the "Coss" felt some awe, without much considering who the consuls were and what the emperor was. The Arco di Gavi, which Palladio called "most beautiful," the work of a period of art superior to that of Vitruvius, according to Scammozi, was taken down by the French at their first conquest of Lombardy. Maffei, however, terms it part of the skeleton of an arch.*

Two of the arches of the Ponte di Pietra, which abut upon the Castello Vecchio, are a Roman work; all that remains of the ancient theatre can only be seen inside a house in the Piazetta del Redentore. These and some fragments of the old wall of Gallienus are, so far as I am aware, the only ancient remains of a city which, for relics of Roman magnificence, has been ranked next to Rome.† But the Lapidario of Maffei, the successor of the Philharmonic Museum, which attracted the attention of Mabillon, has been much increased since the death of its illustrious founder; and the Athenian Will, which the French carried to Paris, has been restored to the collection.

Verona, from the days of Constantine, has been the

* "Parte dello scheletro d'un arco, celebratissimo parimente dagli architetti."-VERON. ILLUS. vol. iv. p. 83.

66

"E poichè Verona in maggior copia ne has conservato di qualunque altra città eccettuando Roma."-VERON. ILLUS. vol. iv. cap. 11, p. 62.

‡ ITER ITALIC., tom. i. cap. 16. He travelled in 1685.

great bulwark of Upper Italy. That conqueror, in his struggle for empire, fought his first important battle under its walls; and here it was that, in 1848, the fate of the peninsula was decided; so that, in one sense, Verona might in these days be called, as she was in the time of the Scaligers,

"Citta ricca e nobile,

Donna e Reina delle terre Italiche."*

When I passed some days there in 1845, every height appeared to me crowned by a battery commanding the city; and I was told that the Austrians were still adding to the defences of the citadel.

*Canzone diretta a Mastin della Scala. -VERON. ILLUS. tom. iv. cap. prim. p. 61.

CHAPTER VI.

Verona to Montebello - Vicenza - Palladian villa of Count Capra Olimpic Theatre - Effect of political condition on dramatic writing Goldoni - Modern melodrames - Condition of Italian actors The Sette Communi - Padua - The University — The Bo-Tomb of Antenor Livy - Famous natives of Padua Dondi.

St. Anthony - St. Giustina

THE country between Verona and Montebello appeared to Burnett, nearly two centuries ago, to be better cultivated than any other part of Italy. The merit of the culture is not easily determined by a passing traveller, but nothing can exceed the beauty of it, nor the apparent richness. The vines hang in festoons from rows of mulberry trees, in fields of clover, and millet, and maize, and other grains. The neighbouring hills are clothed with vineyards and gardens to their summits, and are studded with white villages and villas, with, here and there, an old castle, or a walled town, upon a distant height. The country, on the day we passed (1816), seemed to have poured forth all its population into the roads. All classes, gaily or neatly dressed, were hurrying to the fair at Verona; groups of children were playing in the fields by the road-side, and one little girl was swinging on a festoon of vine tendrils between the mulberry trees. There was nothing in the

scene to remind us that this country had been a battlefield over and over again, and, only a little more than two years ago, had been the theatre of war. Montebello, indeed, with its castle, did recall the victory and the title of one of Napoleon's most favoured marshals.

From this place to the neighbourhood of Vicenza the country is less populous and less enclosed. The Euganean range appears on the south, whilst the dark shadowy forms of the Trentine Alps bound the northern horizon. Near Vicenza the white villages, and gaudy summer-houses, and battlemented walls of gardens, crown the summits of vine-covered, conical eminences, hardly to be called hills. The immediate approach to the city is through a suburb of detached villas; but the general effect is much more pleasing than the individual examination of these Palladian abodes, where mansions of porticoes and pediments, with an approach between sculptured pilasters, surmounted by statues of gods and heroes, are frequently found to be in a cabbage garden, enclosed by four dead walls.

VICENZA.

The author of 'Letters from the North of Italy' says of this place, "I saw more beggars and more palaces

*

*Vicenza seems to have overflowed with nobles and powerful families. At the end of the 'Chronicles' of Godi, who is thought to have written about the year 1313, three lists are given: the first, of fifty-six families, settled in Vicenza; the second, of twelve noble

here than in any other town in Italy." We did not find beggars in much greater force here than in other Italian cities of 30,000 inhabitants. The architectural merit of the palaces, which it requires an architectural eye to understand, is not set off by the narrowness of the streets, made still narrower by arcades, nor by the multitude of white tin pipes projecting from the eaves, nor by the number of these buildings, which diminishes the effect of each of them.* But the Palazzo Pubblico (or Prefettizio), the Gothic basilica, with Palladian loggie, the two columns, between which, as at Venice, criminals were executed, and other structures of the Piazza de' Signori, are grand and imposing. I am not aware of any Roman remains at Vicenza, but Mabillon was shown some fragments of an ancient amphitheatre.† Strangers are taken to see the villa Capra, the prototype of Palladian Chiswick. It is worth a walk, and so also is the Monte Berico, with its arcaded stations, and the sanctuary at the summit, if it

families, all of them counts, who were extinct, and scarcely remembered, when the list was copied from the MSS.; the third, of ninety-nine powerful families, many of them noble and very ancient. Yet Vicenza seems to have been pre-eminently miserable in these dark days. The chronicler, a noble native of the city, begins his Proludium in these terms:-"Enarrare deliberanti miserias, afflictiones, oppressiones, clades, depopulationes, stupra, incendia, calamitates, et cædes quas civitas Vicentia, ejusque districtus hactenus passa est," &c.-RER. ITAL. SCRIP. t. viii. p. 69, edit. Milan, 1726. *The Handbook calls them Venetian Gothic.

† ITER ITALIC., tom. i. p. 25, cap. 17.-" Voracissima temporis injuria Vicentina monumenta adeo attrita sunt ut nunc prisci decoris perexigua supersit notitia,” said a learned Vicentine to Mabillon.