is s

beautiful form of the cypress. The cypress fied. It stands wrapt in its own thoughts. see it without asking, "What ails thee? Is you mourn?" Yet, pensive as it looks, its un fills the landscape with beauty.

Verona, gilded by the beams of Shakspeare's and by the yet purer glory of the martyrs of th was in sight miles before we reached it. It long gentle slope of a low hill, with plenty of a The rich plains at its feet, which stretch aw look up to the old town with evident affec and strive to cheer it by pouring wheat, and into its markets. Its appearance at a distan from its numerous towers, and the long swee battlements, which seem to encircle the wh which the town stands, leaving as much emp their lines as might contain half-a-dozen Ver rons are enchanting. Behind it, and partly the east, are an innumerable array of low hi Italian shape and colour. These were all a-gl villas; and as they sparkled in the sunlight, the deep azure of the mountains, they showed on the blue sea, or stars in the dark sky. were met, of course, by the Austrian gendarm the affair of the passport finished and over as sible, I unfolded the sheet, and carelessly h window of the carriage. The corner of the pa in tall, bold characters, the name of her M Secretary, caught the eye of a passenger. "PALMERSTON!" he shouted aloud. Instan general rush at the document; and fearing th torn in pieces, which would have been an av

and nearly as impossible to get back, I surrendered it to the first speaker, that it might be passed round, and all might gratify their curiosity or idolatry with the sight of a name which abroad is but a synonym for “ England." After making the tour of the diligence, the passport was handed out to the gendarme, who, feeling no such intense desire as did the passengers to see the famous characters, had waited goodnaturedly all the while. The man surveyed with grim complacency a name which was then in no pleasant odour with the statesmen and functionaries of Austria. In return he gave me a paper containing " permission to sojourn for a few hours in Verona," with its co-relative "permission to depart." I felt proud of my country, which could as effectually protect me at the gates of Verona as on the shores of the Forth.

66

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM VERONA TO VENICE.

Interior of Verona-End of World seemingly near i and the Classics-A Cast-Iron Revolutionist-A 1 Railway Carriages-Railway Company-Tyrolese A -Vicenza-Padua-The Lagunes-The Omnibus or City-Sail through the Canals-Charon and his Bo Mark.

THE gates of Verona opened, and the enchan He who would carry away the idea of a magni the exterior of Verona suggests, must go roun it. The first step within its walls is like the chanter's wand. The villa-begemmed city, w and its cypress-trees, takes flight, and there traveller an old ruinous town, with dirty stre and lazy population. It reminds one of what of eastern romance, where young and beautif all at once transformed by malignant genuis withered hags.

In truth, on entering an Italian town on last trumpet were about to sound. The world

in it, seems old—very old. Man is old, his dwellings are old, his works are old, and the very earth seems old. All seems to betoken that it is the last age, and that the world is winding up its business, preparatory to the final closing of the drama. Commerce, the arts, empire,—all have taken their departure, and have left behind only the vestiges of their former presence. The Italians, living in a land which is but a sort of sepulchre, look as if they had voted that the world cannot outlast the present century, and that it is but a waste of labour to rebuild anything or repair anything. Accordingly, all is allowed to go to decay,―roads, bridges, castles, palaces; and the only thing which is in any degree cared for are their churches. Why make provision for posterity, when there is to be none? Why erect new houses, when those already built will last their time and the world's? Why repair their mouldering dwellings, or renew the falling fences of their fields, or replace their dying olives with young trees, or even patch their own ragged garments? The crack of doom will soon be upon them, and all will perish in the great conflagration. They account it the part of wisdom, then, to pass the interval in the least fatiguing and most agreeable manner possible. They sip their coffee, and take their stroll, and watch the shadows as they fall eastward from their purple hills. Why should they incur the toil of labouring or thinking in a world that is soon to pass away, and which is as good as ended already?

The Monks Glimpse te's Patmos -Silence of za of Saint

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Of Verona I can say but little. My stay there, which was not much over the hour, afforded me no opportunity for observation. Its famous Amphitheatre, coeval with the great Coliseum at Rome, and the best preserved Roman Amphitheatre in the world, I had not time to visit. Its numerous churches, with their frescoes and paintings, I less regret not having seen. Its Biblioteca Capitolare, which is said to be an unwrought

quarry of historic and patristic lore, I shoul visit. There, too, the monks of the middle a tripping. "Sophocles or Tacitus," in the w "had been compelled to resign the parchn homilies, and the golden legend." The "Inst which were the foundation of the Institutes of discovered in this library palimpsested. A r spread that the author of the Pandects had re stitutes of Caius" to ashes, that posterity mig the source of his own great work. Gibbon v tradict the scandal, and to point to the monks devastators. His sagacity was justified when vered in the Biblioteca Capitolare of Verona t tutes beneath the homilies of St Jerome. Ve one grand feature untouched by decay or ti Adige, which, passing underneath the walls, the city in a magnificent torrent, spanned by bridges of ancient architecture, and turns in its large floating mills, which are anchored acro The market-place, a large square, was profusely the produce of the neighbouring plains. I purc bread and a magnificent cluster of grapes, and l style.

At Verona the railway resumes, and runs a Venice. What a transition from the diligenceing, snail-paced diligence-to the rail. It is like single leap from the dark ages to modern times.