Drive from Padua to Ferrara--Monselice--Rovigo--Ferrara: Cathedral--Castle--Gallery--Road to Bologna--Altedo--Bologna: Cathedral--San Petronio--San Domenico--San Giacomo--Sta. Maria Maggiore--San Francesco--San Stefano--Leaning Towers--Casa dei Mercanti--Domestic Remains--Academy--Modena: Cathedral--Parma: Cathedral--Correggio--The Baptistery--Piacenza: The Palazzo Publico--Cathedral--San Francesco--Sant’Antonino--San Giovanni in Canale--Asti: Cathedral--San Secondo--Campanili. Any one who has followed the route from Venice to Milan described in the last chapter will do well, instead of following it on a subsequent visit, to make a _détour_ from Padua to Ferrara and Bologna and thence by Parma, Modena, and Piacenza to Milan. I shall give some notes of such a journey in this chapter, the towns visited on the road completing the subject which I have set before me in this volume, and leaving no important city north of the Apennines, save Ravenna, undescribed. This exception is serious; but the omission will be remedied naturally when, as I hope I soon shall, I ask my readers to go with me to the towns on the east coast of Italy. The journey from Padua to Bologna is now, and I suppose always was, extremely uninteresting. The only objects on the road which possess much attraction for the artist are the towns I have mentioned, and these certainly much more repay a visit than do those on the parallel line of road which we have just travelled. Scenery there is none to speak of, and fortunately a railway makes the journey a quick one now; but when I first travelled it I retained no recollection at the end of the route save of long straight and dusty roads lined on either side with tall poplars, and wearisome to the last degree. At Monselice we found a picturesque town domineered over by the ruins of a large castle, whose walls climb the steep sides of the hill on which it stands. Here I saw a good and little altered Romanesque church, with pilasters in place of buttresses, and walls crowned with the usual eaves-arcade. At Rovigo, further on, there is one of the tall brick towers so common here, with its Ghibelline battlement perfect. Just before reaching Ferrara we crossed the Po--here a large, unbridged, and dreary-looking river, flowing rapidly between high artificial banks to the sea. Its bed is, I suppose, now quite above the level of the plain, and year by year the question becomes more urgent and yet more difficult of answer, what is to be done with it? Certainly there are rivers and rivers; and this great stream left none but painful and disagreeable impressions on my mind. At length, after ten hours and a half of the slowest of drivers and worst of vehicles, we reached Ferrara--a _trajet_ now performed by railway in about an hour and a half, with advantage to every one’s time and temper, and no counter-balancing loss.