When I paced slowly across it, silence reigned undisturbed amongst the awful ruins, and nothing moved, save the weeds and grasses which skirt the walls and tremble with the faintest breeze. [Picture: Verona and Venice—the Ducal Palace] I liked the idea of being thus shut in on every side by endless gradines, abandoned to a stillness and solitude I was so peculiarly disposed to taste. Throwing myself upon the grass in the middle of the arena, I enjoyed the freedom of my situation; and pursued the last tracks of light, as they faded behind the solitary arches, which rose above the rest. Red and fatal were the tints of the western sky; the wind blew chill and hollow, and something more than common seemed to issue from the withering herbage on the walls. I started up, fled through a dark arcade, where water falls drop by drop, and arrived, panting, in the great square before the ruins. Directing my steps across it, I reached an ancient castle, once inhabited by the Scaligeri, sovereigns of Verona. Hard by appeared the ruins of a triumphal arch, which most antiquarians ascribe to Vitruvius, enriched with delicate scrolls and flowery ornaments. I could have passed half-an-hour very agreeably in copying these elegant sculptures; but night covering them with her shades, I returned home to the Corso; where the outlines of several palaces, designed by Michel San Michele, attracted my attention. But it was too dusky to examine their details. _September_ 11_th_.—Traversing once more the grand piazza, and casting a last glance upon the amphitheatre, we passed under a lofty arch which terminates the perspective, and left Verona by a wide, irregular, picturesque street, commanding, whenever you look back, a striking scene of towers, cypress, and mountains. The country, between this beautiful town and Mantua, presents one continued grove of dwarfish mulberries, among which start up innumerable barren hills. Now and then a knot of poplars diversify their craggy summits, and sometimes a miserable shed. Mantua itself rises out of a morass formed by the Mincio, whose course, in most places, is so choked up with reeds as to be scarcely discernible. It requires a creative imagination to discover any charms in such a prospect, and a strong prepossession not to be disgusted with the scene where Virgil was born. For my own part, I approached this neighbourhood with proper deference, and began to feel the God, but finding no tufted tree on which I could suspend my lyre, or verdant bank which invited to repose, I abandoned poetry and entered the city in despair. The beating of drums, and sight of German whiskers, finished what croaking frogs and stagnant ditches had begun. Every classic idea being scared by such sounds and such objects, I dined in dudgeon, and refused stirring out till late in the evening.