It is recorded, too, that he returned to Verona for a repetition of the detestable entertainment in the Arena in the month of November, 1807; but that on this occasion the bull-fight was spoiled for him by the early on-drawing of the night—which is not surprising when we read that the spectacle did not begin until half-past four in the afternoon! The last of these loathsome affairs took place, it is grievous to think, under good Archduke John of Austria, in the autumn after Waterloo, on the occasion of his assuming the functions of Governor of Venetia—the solitary instance of his sanctioning anything approaching cruelty. It was in the Arena of Verona that my dear old Adelaide Ristori made her first bow to the public of Northern Italy, although she was already well known to that of Rome. I cannot say at this moment precisely when she first acted in Verona; but I fancy it was at some time in the forties of the last century, the “roaring forties,” when Venetia was making ready for the eruption of ’48. Verona was the special darling of “Father” Radetzky, of whose beloved Quadrilateral it formed the chief fortress, and it was he who fortified it so well and lovingly as to make it well-nigh impregnable. It was to Verona, moreover, that he fell back with his small but well-disciplined army during those dark days of May, 1848, when, as the poet Grillparzer wrote in a poem addressed to the fearless old hero: “We others are but scattered ruins, And in thy camp alone is Austria.” From Verona, too, it was that the Austrian troops took train in the July of 1866, under Archduke Albrecht, to go up into Moravia to the assistance of Benedek’s army; and from Verona it was that the Archduke’s historic telegram was despatched, on receipt of the news of Sadowa, to the Emperor at Vienna, bidding him take heart and have no fear for the outcome of the struggle: “Nothing is lost yet so if only both Army and People will spurn discouragement from them. After the defeat at Regensburg came the glorious day of Aspern....”