visited all the large churches, took some coffee, and before nine o’clock was on my way through the vast plain watered by the Po, which, like most large rivers, branches near its mouth into several streams. The lad who drove me did not know the road very well, and lost his way several times, so that instead of arriving before daybreak it was six o’clock in the morning when we entered Ferrara. Indeed he came near losing his horse as well as the road, for while I was sleeping soundly in the carriage I was roused by a prodigious clatter, and jumping out as quick as I could, found that he had driven into a heap of rough stones deposited to mend the road; the horse had slipped and was lying flat upon his back in the bottom of the ditch. With much ado we liberated him from the carriage and lifted him out of the ditch, repaired the injury to the harness as well as we could with bits of rope, and were again on our way. I have wondered since how I could ride thus through the night, with only a boy with me, through a country which some years ago would not have been deemed safe. But I felt not the slightest alarm, and slept as soundly as possible. Ferrara is famous for possessing the tomb and chair of Ariosto, but except this is as uninteresting as you can imagine. It was Sunday, and I spent the day within doors as well as I could. By making a very early ride I succeeded in reaching Padua at ten o’clock this morning; visited the university so famed of old, the churches, the splendid Caffè Pedrocchi, the Botanic Garden,--the most ancient in Italy, of which Alpinius, the elder and the younger, and Pontedera were the directors. It is under the care of Visiani,[98] to whom I brought a letter from Bentham, and who politely showed me all I wished to see. The university is a queer old place indeed, and the lecture-rooms the most dark, gloomy, and incommodious places you can conceive; everything is as old as the fifteenth century. I wish I could describe the anatomical theatre, which is the most curious specimen of antiquity I have seen. The Museum of Natural History is so-so. There is still a goodly number of students, but nothing to what there was in the olden time. The Duomo is a small affair, but the church of St. Antonio is like a mosque, the most Saracenic building I ever saw,--with its seven or eight balloon-shaped domes of various sizes, and three or four tall and slender minarets. I am sorry I can’t get a decent print of it. The interior is noble, and very rich in tombs and shrines and sculptures. Here are tombs of many of the old professors. The church of St. Augustine is in the same style, and not much inferior.... There is very much that I wish to write, but I have not the time nor the strength to write longer, and must sleep. To understand the full luxury of a bed you should sleep without one, as I have done very often of late. Good-night. VENICE, on board steamboat for Triest, lying at anchor, Wednesday evening, May 15, 1839.