The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867.

iles and miles of dim arcade over-roofing the sidewalks everywhere, affording excellent opportunity for the flirtation of lovers by day and the vengeance of rivals

self for having visited Padua so often and so familiarly as I used to do,-for having been bored and hungry there,-for having had toothache there, upon one occasion,-for having rejoiced more in a cup of coffee at Pedrocchi's than in the whole history of Padua,-for having slept repeatedly in the bad-bedded hotels of Padua and never once dreamt of Portia,-for having

you have been there?" asked Heine of Théoph

lf the many sieges that the wall had known, with the fierce assault by day, the secret attack by night, the swarming foe upon the plains below, the bristling arms of the besieged upon the wall, the boom of the great mortars made of ropes and leather and throwing mighty balls of stone, the stormy flight of arrows, the ladders planted against the defences and staggering hea

andsknechts at the gates, and, uniting with the citizens, cut the German garrison to pieces. But it was a thing long past. The German garrison was here again; and the heirs of the landsknechts went clanking through the gate to the parade-ground, with that fierce clamor of their kettle-drums which is so much

-women who have been bringing fruits and vegetables to the Paduan market for so many centuries. They sit upon the ground before their great panniers, and knit and doze, and wake up with a drowsy "Comandala?" as you linger to look at their grapes. They have each a pair of scales,-the emblem of Injustice,-and will weigh you out a scant measure of the fruit, if you like. Their faces are yellow as parchment, and Time has written them so full of wrinkles that there is not room for another line. Doubtless these old parchment visages are palimpsests, and would tell the whole history of Padua if you could get at each successive inscription. Among their primal records there must be some account of the Roman city, as

I know that, if I entered it, I should be sure of finding the great hall of the palace-the vastest hall in the world-dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in i

ed them for months, on account of political demonstrations among the students. But now there is an end of this and many other stupid oppressions; and the time-honored University will doubtless regain its ancient importance. Even in 1864 it had nearly fifteen hundred students, and one met them everywhere under the arcades, and could not well mistake them, with that blended air of pirate and dandy which these studious young men loved to assume. They were to be seen a good deal on the promenades outside the walls, where the Paduan ladies are driven in their carriages in the afternoon, and where one sees the blood-horses and fine equipages for which Padua is famous. There used once to be races in the Prato della Valle, after the Italian n

er; and as to the disadvantage of having seen Padua, I begin to think the whole place has now assumed so fant

nce fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves. Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice and the Lombard

nunziata,-which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor seems to have been for ages. Cool it is, and of a pulverous smell, as a sacred place should be; a blessed benching goes round the wall, and you sit down and take unlimited comfort in the frescos. The gar

in the spring. The work of the heroes is play to us; the pang of the martyr is a thrill of rapture; the exile's longing is a strain of plaintive music touching and delighting us. We are not only young again, we are immortal. It is this divine sense of superiority to fate whi

our; yet we early quit the Chapel of Giotto on this account. We had chosen our driver from among many other drivers of brougha

who had selected him, "how mu

and

he tariff

is no t

s. Show

lost, s

is here in this p

at he had demanded just what the boatman of

due, and a handsome mancia besides, he was still unsatisfied, and referred to the tariff in proof that he had been under-paid. On that confronted and d

e picture by Romanino. But as this paper has nothing in the world to do with art, I here dismiss that subject,

nder at things without the least critical reservation. I therefore, in the sense of deglutition, bolted this prison at once, though sub

nives; but whatever the form of martyrdom, an iron ring in the ceiling was employed in it, as I know from seeing the ring,-a curiously well-preserved piece of ironmongery. Within the narrow prison of the saint, and just under the grating, through which the sacristan thrust his candle to illuminate it, was a mountain of candle-drippings,-a monument to the fact that faith still largely exists in this doubting world. My own credulity, not only with regard to this prison, but also touching the coffin of St. Luke, which I saw in the church, had so wrou

ate gentleman near by. As I had just bought a history of Ecelino, at a great bargain, from a second-hand bookstall, and had

more incredibly severe and bloody in his rule than as lord of the other cities, for the Paduans had been latest free, and conspired most frequently against him. He extirpated whole families on suspicion that a single member had been concerned in a meditated revolt. Little children and helpless women suffered hideous mutilation and shame at his hands. Six prisons in Padua were constantly filled by his arrests. The whole country was traversed by witnesses of his cruelties,-men and women deprived of an arm or leg, and begging from door to door. He had long been excommunicated; at last the Church proclaimed a crusade against him, and his lieutenant and nephew-more demoniacal, if possible, than himself-was driven