BRIXIA is called a Cenomanian town, but it must not be inferred from this that the Cenomani occupied the whole territory of Brixia, for the whole valley of the Camuni was Raetian. The conquering Gauls did not dwell in the mountains, but in the plains fitted for the breeding of cattle and their rude agriculture. If we draw a line from lake Garda to Brixia, and thence northward towards the Adda, so as to separate Bergamum from the country of the Gauls, all the country north of that line did not belong to Italy before the time of Augustus, not even in its wider sense, but to the Alpine tribes. Catullus says of Brescia _Veronae mater amata meae_, which is unaccountable, for Verona was a small Gallic town. It is possible that Brixia may have been the seat of a conventus, somewhat in the same relation in which the metropolis in Asia Minor stood to the other towns; this is probable enough, or else Catullus alludes to the ancient Etruscan times, in which case Brixia would be the mother city of Verona. MANTUA, according to Virgil (_Tusco de sanguine vires_) a Tuscan town; the manner in which he speaks of it, shows that it was a town with a territory, which was divided into twelve districts. Although he describes it as a considerable town, it does not appear in this light, and we must probably make some allowance for the poet’s partiality for his native city. Its territory, however, may have been extensive, as is evident from the fact that it was contiguous to that of Cremona. VERONA, to the north of Mantua, is remarkable because for a considerable period it was the seat of the Lombard kings, as before it had been the residence of Theodoric, who in the German lays is called Dietrich of Bern. There can be no doubt that the name of this far-famed chivalrous town was transferred to Berne in Switzerland, which was built by duke Berthold of Zähringen. Its ancient circumference may still be recognised, and from it we see how small those towns in the north of Italy were during the imperial period, in comparison with what they were in the middle ages. The whole of Lombardy, Tuscany, and Venice were far more flourishing in the middle ages than at any period in classical antiquity. If we compare Italy during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with what it was in the days of Cicero, it is as a garden compared with a desert. The ancient town of Verona occupied scarcely one-fourth of the extent which it had in the time of the princes of Della Scalla; it still has the same circumference, but is desolate notwithstanding its 60,000 inhabitants. However, that Verona was a great and wealthy town even in antiquity, may be seen from the splendid gate of the emperor Gallienus (which also shews that it was a Roman colony), and from the splendid amphitheatre. Its fate has not been so disastrous as that of Milan; for throughout the middle ages it was not visited by a single great calamity. It is singular to observe how some towns are ever visited by misfortunes,