VERONA.

have been barricaded off. Here, occasionally, there are dramatic pieces performed, -a practice introduced by the French, who, when they were at Verona, repaired and cleared out the arena. As early as the thirteenth century its preservation had become an object of public attention, when it was used as a place of judicial combats; and in the fifteenth, penalties were decreed against wilful dilapidations. When the Emperor Joseph visited Verona, a bull-fight was, in honour of the event, given in the Amphitheatre; and, upon another occasion, it was made the scene of prostration-mind and body—of an immense concourse assembled to meet the Pope, who, on his passage through Verona, received there the homage of the multitude.

The Veronesi accuse the French, as modern Huns or Lombards, of having built the wooden theatre in the arena, where its gladiatorial glories have been degenerated to farces and pantomimes; but there is nothing to regret in this change, since these exhibitions are infinitely less savage and more amusing. In 1822, the author saw a comedy of Goldoni's performed there.

The approach to the Amphitheatre is through a miserable old clothes shop; and other external parts of the building are appropriated as shops for shoemakers and cabinet-makers. In one of these, geological specimens were offered for sale, and among them, the fish and plants found embedded in the shale of Monte Bolca

-a mountain about fifteen miles from Verona, celebrated among naturalists for its richness in the quantity and variety of its fossil productions.

made known in They are six in

Besides the amphitheatre, there are other Roman antiquities, but not of much interest. Of the remains of the middle ages, the tomb of Pepin, the father of Charlemagne, is pointed out to travellers; but the most strikingly picturesque objects in Verona are the tombs of the Scaligers, sovereign princes of Verona, which stand in a small enclosure in one of the public streets. They have in part been England by Mr. Prout's drawings. number, though only three are very remarkable for their Gothic architecture. All are distinguished by the armorial bearings of the family-the eagle and scaling ladder. Forsyth says:-"The tombs of the Scaliger princes are models of the most elegant Gothic-light, open, spiry, full of statues caged in their fretted niches; yet, slender as they seem, these tombs have stood entire for five hundred years, in a public street, the frequent theatre of sedition." But they certainly are not "models of the most elegant Gothic;" or if they are, our beautiful Gothic crosses are not to be judged by the same principles of architecture or taste. Their structure gives no promise of their durability, and the ornaments and arrangements are as fantastical as they are exuberant.

VERONA.

There is one object of particular interest, which all English travellers visit, and wish to be true-the tomb of Juliet. Lord Byron, in a letter to Moore, dated Verona, writes: "Of the truth of Juliet's story they seem tenacious to a degree, insisting on the fact, giving a date (1303), and shewing a tomb. It is a plain, open, and partly decayed sarcophagus, with withered leaves in it, in a wild and desolate conventual garden, once a cemetery, now ruined to the very graves. The situation struck me as very appropriate to the legend, being blighted as their love. I have brought away a few pieces of the granite to give to my daughter and my nieces." He adds: "Since my arrival at Venice, the lady of the Austrian ambassador told me, that between Verona and Vicenza there are still ruins of the castle of Montecchi, and a chapel once belonging to the Capulets. Romeo seems to have been of Vicenza by the tradition; but I was a good deal surprised to find so firm a faith in Bandello's novel, which seems really to have been founded on a fact." The sarcophagus has been used as a water-trough, and a hole has been made in it for the plug. Within the hollow at one end a ledge has been left, evidently as a resting-place for the head of the cold occupant. This form removes any doubt that it was made as a tenement for the dead. The material is a reddish compact limestone. The dilapidating rage of the visitors is now checked by order of the Austrian

government; and the integrity of the old custoda who shews it, has a higher price than formerly. She always relates to them the history of the "famous lovers," and her tale agrees with Shakespeare's. Here, in Verona, we feel at home. The city has been peopled by the "master-spirit" of our country, with beings, which, if they had no existence but from his imagination, can never die. Here Shakespeare laid some of his scenes; and the visitors who have fancy, can restore to its streets the brawlers of the rival families of the

Capelli and Montecchi -the Anglicised names are better the Capulets and the Montagues-for with these we associate Romeo and Mercutio, and the gentle and confiding Juliet-one so young, so beautiful, and so fearless in her first and only love, that she dared become a living inhabitant of the tomb, and through this murky state of semblant death, seek her only happiness on earth-the society of him to whom alone her heart was devoted. This is the source of an Englishman's feelings at Verona-that her tale of deep interest is immortalised in the language of his country.