"And where art thou, with all thy songs and smiles, Thou dream-like city of the hundred isles-- Thy marble columns, and thy princely halls, Thy merry masques and moonlight carnivals, Thy weeping myrtles and thy orange bowers, Thy lulling fountains 'mid ambrosial flowers, The cloudless beauty of thy deep blue skies, Thy starlight serenades to ladies' eyes, Thy lion, looking o'er the Adrian sea, Defiance to the world and power to thee? That pageant of the sunny waves is gone, Her glory lives on memory's page alone; It flashes still in Shakespeare's living lay, And Otway's song has snatched it from decay. But ah! her Chian steeds of brass no more Shall lord it proudly over sea and shore; Nor ducal sovereigns launch upon the tide, To win the Adriatic for their bride! Hushed is the music of her gondoliers, And fled the glory of a thousand years; And Tasso's spirit round her seems to sigh In every Adrian gale that wanders by!"
The journey to Padua is over a level, well-cultivated, and fertile plain, intersected by many small canals. To the north, and on the left, the snow-capped Tyrolese Alps form a grand relief to the monotony of the surrounding country.
Padua is now a very quiet unimportant little city, with only about forty-five thousand inhabitants; and very greatly changed from the time when it was so justly famed for its University.
"In thine halls, the lamp of learning Padua, now no more is burning;
Once remotest nations came To adore that sacred flame."
When Galileo, Fallopius, Fabricius, and other celebrated men were professors at this university, it could boast of numerous students from all parts of the world: Tasso and Columbus were educated here. Shakespeare bears witness to the respect in which its learned doctors were held, in his immortal "Merchant of Venice."
Livy was born here 50 B.C., dying in his seventy-sixth year. He is supposed to be buried here, and his tomb is shown; but that his bones lie beneath the stones is certainly like too many things in Italy--a fable. Here, by-the-by, also dwelt the shrewish Katharina--
"Renown'd in Padua, for her scolding tongue."
Padua, once Patavium, is of very ancient date, and is said to owe its origin to Antenor, the brother of Priam, King of Troy. Dryden, in his translation of Virgil, says--