emotions excited by this continued succession of interesting objects presented to my sight, of those transcendent in art and in the glories of nature, almost bewilder the mind, preventing its sober self-examination: but they leave ineffaceable images behind, which, though passing from the view, are stored up -treasures of memory that time cannot take from me. My hours were few at Vicenza, where, as in all the Italian cities, churches and palaces abounded, enriched with the works of the great masters that make constant demand on the industrious attention of the traveller; and to these I never failed to apply myself with unwearying diligence. But the name most in the mouths of the ciceroni of this city is that of Palladio, who has embellished his birth-place with monuments of his art, that justify the pride with which his name is cherished. Among these the Teatro Olimpico, designed as a model theatre for the ancient drama, is regarded as his masterpiece. It interested me; but I am not a sufficient connoisseur in architecture thoroughly to appreciate its acknowledged excellence. In Padua I made a longer stay, visiting under conduct of a valet de place the different churches, where the works of Giotto, Titian, Paul Veronese, &c., are conspicuous. Of the old Amphitheatre there is little to remark beyond its site. The monument at Liraj, and the tomb, said to be of Antenor, could not fail to be noted by me. The many objects of art, architectural (for here Palladio has extended his triumphs), sculptural, and pictorial, employed all my daylight; but the fatigue of my perambulations did not prevent me from attending the theatre in the evening, which, even after the Scala, I thought magnificent. The performance was an opera. I did not learn its title, nor remain to its close, what I saw of it impressing me but very feebly. Before however going there, it was necessary for me to make provision for my projected visit to Arquà on the morrow: a sojourn in Padua, although rich in recollections, would have appeared incomplete to me if it had not comprehended Arquà. The lines of the noble eulogist are familiar to all lovers of poetry: "There is a tomb in Arquà: rear'd in air, Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose The pilgrims of his genius." 1822. ARQUÀ. 249 My visit there had all the penance in it that a pilgrim could desire, and certainly was the most unsentimental of any excursion I have ever made. I had had reason in so many instances to complain of the extortion practised on me at the hotels, that I thought the best mode of securing myself from imposition on this occasion was to be my own purveyor for the next day's carriage. Accordingly, I made inquiry respecting the hire at the best stables in the city. The rogues there took their cue from my foreign accent, and being proportionately exorbitant in their charges, so raised my choler as to make me exhaust what I knew of the abusive in the Italian vocabulary in expressing my indignation at their unblushing demands. At last a quiet and seemingly simple fellow agreed to take me and replace me in my locanda for eight francs. I inquired of his carriage. Pointing to some standing near that I had rejected, "These," I observed, "are too shabby: is it better than any of these?" Confidently, he replied, "O Corpo di San Tomaso, molto più bella!" "And the horse!" "And the horse!" "Eccellente !" "Shall we go quick ?" "Prestissimamente!" "Safe!" "Sicuro!" "At 5 o'clock ?" "Senza dubbio." "The horse is really good?" "Buonissimo!" All was, as I thought, most satisfactorily arranged, and with the early morning I rose from a very uncomfortable bed in my very uncomfortable inn, delighted with the idea of breathing the fresh morning air in a neat and spruce conveyance and pacing merrily over the campaign to Arquà. The vettura was announced. I was equipped and eager for the expedition. Full of Petrarch and Laura, my imagination revelling in ideas of the beautiful and ardent, the sensitive and romantic, I descended, but stopped short at the door. A carriage was there certainly, which I looked at, quite aghast. It was a rotten, shattered old gig or tim-whisky, it had no springs, and, though corded up in several places, seemed incapable of surviving the shock of starting. It looked as if it had been discharged some months from hospital service, and left to die a natural death by rotting away on some dunghill out of which this rascal must have picked it. The horse was not unworthy of what he was tied to. this the carriage?" in consternation I asked. "Sicuro, signor." There was no alternative-into it I got, my nerves responding "Is My to the creaking and trembling of the rickety affair. conduttore followed; he was a compound of villanous smells, from which I partially defended myself with eau-de-cologne. We made our way through two or three streets, and had just entered a deeply dusty road, running parallel with the ramparts and leading to the city gate, when the horse tripped and made a complete somersault clean out of the shafts, bursting the harness in sundry places. The driver raised the rascally animal, and replacing him between the shafts, we resumed our seats, when he began kicking as if some spirit of evil were in him, and never rested till he had sent the footboard in the air and both of us into the dusty road. "Corpo di San Tomaso!" exclaimed the driver, "è una disgrazia!" Muttering all terms of abuse in my own language, I resigned myself to my destiny. A cord mended the broken tackle, and we once more ventured ourselves in the vehicle, but to little purpose; we were kicked out by this vicious brute on an average every mile and a half, until we reached the foot of the hill leading to Arquà. At every ejectment that we endured from this detestable beast, the conduttore adjured the body of his patron saint, San Tomaso di Padova, as he himself informed me. "Is he a good one?" I inquired. "O, buonissimo," he replied, "the best in all Padua." The level country through which we passed was rich, but not particularly interesting: as we entered the hilly region, the beauty of Italian scenery, in all its mixture of fertility and wildness, of luxuriance and sublimity, broke upon our view. "Grazie a San Tomaso," for our safe delivery, was my silent thought, as we finished our outward-bound course. I left my fellow-sufferer to busy himself with the repairs of harness and carriage and to feed his ill-tempered brute, that he might have spirit enough to kick us back again to Padua. A very intelligent boy, whom I selected from the swarm of ragged urchins that volunteered their services as ciceroni, conducted me up the hill to the house of Petrarch. I followed him from room to room with all the veneration which the laurelled genius exacted, saw his chair and secretaire, and added my name to the long list of pilgrims (none had more justly earned that title than myself) who were enrolled in the record of his admirers. I passed on to his tomb, close to the small church of Arquà-a simple, square, 1822. PETRARCH'S TOMB. 251 unostentatious monument on steps, with four pillars supporting a stone sarcophagus. The following lines I hastily copied into my pocket-book :— “Frigida, Francisci lapis hic tegit ossa Petrarcæ, Suscipe, virgo parens, animam, sate virgine, parce: 66 MCCCLXXIIII. XVIII. JULII.” * Four laurel-trees in full berry grew, one at each corner, overshadowing and adorning with most appropriate gracefulness the modest interesting structure. The view over the far outspreading plains of Lombardy was most extensive, lost in the seemingly interminable expanse of luxuriant vegetation, which contrasted well with the less fertile summits of the hills around me. The grandeur of the landscape, but still more the name and remains of Petrarch, are all that give interest to this secluded spot. Plucking a small branch from one of the laurels, the withered remains of which I still possess, I reascended the crazy, freshly-corded vehicle to go through again the same set of manoeuvres that the fractious brute had made us undergo in our journey here. Seven times was I served with notice to quit from the heels of this restive animal, and, as a pleasant finish to this eventful history, my perfumed guide on regaining Padua drove me, covered with dust and perspiring with exertion, passion, and shame at my appearance, through the principal streets, crowded with the gaily-dressed inhabitants, who were flocking, to the sound of the Sunday morning's bell then tolling, to morning mass. My green spectacles and the conviction that no one knew me from Beau Brummell or the Emperor Alexander incog., enabled my mauvaise honte to endure this concluding trial; but, oh! the relief in jumping out of this antediluvian piece of patchwork in the yard of my albergo is indescribable! I paid the rascal who had trapped me into this purgatorial expedition; gave him, his horse, and San Tomaso di Padova to Old Nick; and, ordering a more respectable vettura for Fusina, by ablution and libation washed. *Under this stone the bones of Petrarch rest; Son of the Virgin, make him whole, That, weary here, he may with God be blest. away all unpleasant recollections of my poetical pilgrimage, and in a less desperate machine set out on my route to Venice. The thick grass which overgrew the pavement of the last street before the gate of Omnium Sanctorum was a sad remembrance of the "revolution of the times," an eloquent, mournful indication of declension and decay. It was otherwise, I thought, when the noble contended for the independence of his little principality, or when Padua was the home of learning, the popular resort of the wise and the ambitious. The ride along the Brenta's banks, studded with villas and villages, in which were groups of holiday-keepers obstreperous in their noisy mirth, brought me to Fusina, the place of embarkation in gondola for Venice. This was the only mode of reaching it: there were no railways then; and I believe in the whole world. there was no city that offered to the traveller's approval a spectacle so imposing as that of Venice. Her peculiarity of situation has been so often descanted on that it may be supposed familiar to every imagination, although no description can do justice to the startling reality, or weaken the crowding sensations that swell the enthusiast's bosom as his gondola glides from between the high banks of the narrow Brenta upon the widely-spreading surface of the Adriatic, and the scene of wonder bursts upon his sight. The setting sun poured its last beams of ruddy light upon the majestic city of the sea, that rose like some fabled work of enchantment from the bosom of the subject flood. The blue summits of the distant Alps on one side, and the scattered islands on the other, closed in the fairy prospect. There was scarcely a ripple on the glittering waters, nor a sound in the air except the far-off tolling of the vesper bells, that came sadly and slowly booming over the expanse. If" the pale moonlight" be in appropriate tone to the mouldering grandeur of a Gothic ruin, the hour of sunset does not less truly harmonise with the decaying magnificence of a capital like Venice. She still sits like a queen indeed upon her watery throne, but it is in "faded splendour wan." Her edifices and public places are monuments; no single object speaks of recent achievement. Her spoils from Constantinople, and her trophies set up on the conquests of Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes, still stand in reproach of her degenerate sons, for the tributary |