One only of Palladio’s works interested me, and this rather as a curious experiment than as a work of art. This is the Teatro Olimpico, a famous open-air theatre. There is first of all a semi-circular auditorium open to the sky, and only remarkable for a mean arrangement of pilasters at the back. The great object of interest is the stage, on which a permanent scene has been constructed by Palladio. In order to make this look much larger than it really is, the streets, palaces, and temples which are represented are built in perspective. To accomplish this the stage rises very rapidly, the buildings are squeezed up, and built in sharp perspective, so that in the end a triumphal arch, which is really forty feet from the front, looks as if it were four hundred. Should an actor by any chance so far forget himself as to walk into what looks like a practicable street, in a minute he would find himself able to shake hands with the statue on the top of the arch, the illusion would be entirely destroyed, and the scenery would all look like a collection of dolls’ houses. As an ingenious deception from one point of view, and under certain conditions, the scheme is successful, and probably this is as much as Palladio himself would have claimed for it. We had now seen all that we cared to see in Vicenza, and gladly found ourselves again _en route_. There was nothing to see on the road, and we were not sorry when our engine gave token by its whistle of our approach to Padua. The omnibus discharged us in a few minutes at the hospitable doors of the Stella d’Oro, and we were soon out again with the view of making the most of our time. Padua, when I first saw it, seemed to me to be a most melancholy city; grass grew in the streets, the footways were all formed under dark and dismal arcades, and not only the externals of the half-occupied palaces, but those even of all the houses, looked squalid, dirty, and miserable; nor was there any relief when one got into the more open spaces, for the large piazze on either side of the Palazzo della Ragione, or townhall, looked as squalid and uncared-for, as dirty and unprepossessing, as they well could; nor was this universal squalor rendered at all less remarkable by the fact that Padua rejoices in a caffè, which is said to surpass any other even in Italy, for its smartness; and the array of well-dressed gentlemen who frequented it, certainly made the neighbourhood look more wretched by contrast than it otherwise would.