We reached Verona the second day: it is delightfully situated. Mr. Addison has given a very beautiful description of the Giusti gardens which overlook it on one side. They here shew you the tomb of Juliet: it looks like an empty cistern in a common court-yard: you look round, however, and the carved niches with the frescoes on the walls convince you that you are in the precincts of an ancient monastery. The guide also points to the part of the wall that Romeo leaped over, and takes you to the spot in the garden where he fell. This gives an air of trick and fiction to the whole. The tradition is a thousand years old: it is kept up with a tender and pious awe: the interest taken in the story of a passion faithful to death shews not that the feeling is rare, but common. Many Italian women have read Shakspeare’s tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, admire and criticise it with great feeling. What remains of the old monastery is at present a Foundling Hospital. On returning from this spot, which is rather low and gloomy, we witnessed the most brilliant sight we had seen in Italy—the sun setting in a flood of gold behind the Alps that overlook the lake of Garda. The Adige foamed at our feet below; the bank opposite was of pure emerald; the hills which rose directly behind it in the most fantastic forms were of perfect purple, and the arches of the bridge to the left seemed plunged in ebon darkness by the flames of light that darted round them. Verona has a less dilapidated, pensive air than Ferrara. Its streets and squares are airy and spacious; but the buildings have a more modern and embellished look, and there is an appearance of greater gaiety and fashion among the inhabitants. The English sometimes come here to reside, though not in such crowds as at Florence, and things are proportionably less dear. The Amphitheatre is nearly as fine and quite as entire as that at Rome: the Gate of Galienas terminates one of the principal streets. We met with nothing remarkable the rest of the way to Milan, except the same rich, unvaried face of the country; the distant Alps hanging like a thin film over the horizon, or approaching nearer in lofty, solid masses as we advanced; the lake of Garda embosomed in them, and the fine fortress of Peschiera buried in its almost subterranean fastnesses like a mole; the romantic town of Virli, with a rainbow glittering over its verdant groves and hills; a very bad inn at Brescia, and a very excellent one at Treviglio. Milan was alive and full of visitors, thick as the ‘motes that people the sun-beam;’ it felt the presence of its lord. The Emperor of Austria was there! Milan (at least on this occasion) was as gay as Bath or any town in England. How times and the characters of countries change with them! In other parts of Italy, as at Rome and at Florence, the business of the inhabitants seemed to be to hide themselves, neither to see nor be seen: here it was evidently their object to do both. The streets were thronged and in motion, and the promenades full of carriages and of elegantly-dressed women, as on a festival or gala-day. I think I never saw so many well-grown, well-made, good-looking women as at Milan. I did not however see one face strikingly beautiful, or with a very fine expression. In this respect the Romans have the advantage of them. The North has a tinge of robust barbarism in it. Their animation was a little exuberant; their look almost amounts to a stare, their walk is a swing, their curiosity is not free from an air of defiance. The free and unrestrained manners of former periods of Italy appear also to have been driven northward, and to have lingered longer on the confines. The Cathedral or Duomo is a splendid fabric of white marble: it is rich, vast, and the inside solemn and full of a religious awe: the marble is from a quarry on the Lago Maggiore. We also saw the celebrated theatre of the Gran Scala, which is of an immense size and of extreme beauty, but it was not full, nor was the performance striking. The manager is the proprietor of the Cobourg Theatre (Mr. Glossop), and his wife (formerly our Miss Fearon) the favourite singer of the Milanese circles. I inquired after the great pantomime Actress, Pallarini, but found she had retired from the stage on a fortune. The name of Vigano was not known to my informant. I did not see the great picture of the Last Supper by Leonardo nor the little Luini, two miles out of Milan, which my friend Mr. Beyle charged me particularly to see.