EXCURSION FROM VENICE TO VERONA--TRUTH OF BYRON'S DESCRIPTION OF ITALIAN SCENERY--THE LOMBARDY PEASANTRY--APPEARANCE OF THE COUNTRY--MANNER OF CULTIVATING THE VINE ON LIVING TREES--THE VINTAGE--ANOTHER VISIT TO JULIET'S TOMB--THE OPERA AT VERONA--THE PRIMA DONNA--ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE--BOLOGNA AGAIN--MADAME MALIBRAN IN LA GAZZA LADRA--CHEAP LUXURIES--THE PALACE OF THE LAMBACCARI--A MAGDALEN OF GUIDO CARRACCI-- CHARLES THE SECOND'S BEAUTIES--VALLEY OF THE ARNO--FLORENCE ONCE MORE.
Our gondola set us on shore at Fusina an hour or two before sunset, with a sky (such as we have had for five months) without a cloud, and the same promise of a golden sunset, to which I have now become so accustomed, that rain and a dark heaven would seem to me almost unnatural. It was the hour and the spot at which Childe Harold must have left Venice, and we look at the "blue Friuli mountains," the "deep-died Brenta," and the "Rhoetian hill," and feel the truth of his description as well as its beauty. The two banks of the Brenta are studded with the palaces of the Venetian nobles for almost twenty miles, and the road runs close to the water on the northern side, following all its graceful windings, and, at every few yards, surprising the traveller with some fresh scene of cultivated beauty, church, palace, or garden, while the gondolas on the stream, and the fair "damas" of Italy sitting under the porticoes, enliven and brighten the picture. These people live out of doors, and the road was thronged with the _contadini_; and here and there rolled by a carriage, with servants in livery; or a family of the better class on their evening walk, sauntered along at the Italian pace of indolence, and a finer or happier looking race of people would not easily be found. It is difficult to see the athletic frames and dark flashing eyes of the Lombardy peasantry, and remember their degraded condition. You cannot believe it will remain so. If they think at all, they must, in time, feel too deeply to endure.
The guide-book says, the "traveller wants words to express his sensations at the beauty of the country from Padua to Verona." Its beauty is owing to the perfection of a method of cultivation universal in Italy. The fields are divided into handsome squares, by rows of elms or other forest trees, and the vines are trained upon these with all the elegance of holyday festoons, winding about the trunks, and hanging with their heavy clusters from one to the other, the foliage of vine and tree mingled so closely that it appears as if they sprung from the same root. Every square is perfectly enclosed with these fantastic walls of vine-leaves and grapes, and the imagination of a poet could conceive nothing more beautiful for a festival of Bacchus. The ground between is sown with grass or corn. The vines are luxuriant always, and often send their tendrils into the air higher than the topmost branch of the tree, and this extends the whole distance from Padua to Verona, with no interruption except the palaces and gardens of the nobles lying between.