There is a colossal statue of him by a modern Veronese sculptor, not unworthy of the subject or place, standing in the quiet Piazza dei Signori amid the deserted homes of the Della Scale, looking toward the palace of Can Grande, whose generous hospitality could not sweeten the bread of charity nor ease the steps of a patron's court to the proud exile. Dante could not have been easy to live with upon any terms. "Eh, puir fellow! he looks like a verra ill-tempered mon," quoth Carlyle once after a long contemplation of the poet's portrait. He played the part of Mentor, and a very morose one, to the splendid, gallant, good-natured prince and his gay court, and Can Grande seems to have derived the same sort of diversion from his diatribes as from the quips and cranks of his jesters. At last Dante wore out his welcome, as he did everywhere until the patient earth gave him an abiding-place at Ravenna. His whole life of disappointed ambition, unrecognized patriotism, unspoken love, baffled hatred, lonely rangings in awful spheres, banishment, poverty, mortification, unrest, inspiration, conscious immortality, passes before one in this spot, which he must have crossed and recrossed innumerable times, and his presence even in the marble makes it all his own. Yet if the statue could wake to life, the man would not know the familiar place, which has been wholly transformed since his days. The principal ornament of the square is the Palazzo del Consiglio, a beautiful example of _cinque-cento_ architecture, its exuberant decoration still subordinate to the harmony and proportion of the general design. This has been converted into a pantheon for the celebrated men of Verona, whose statues surmount the building, and among whom we recognize many old acquaintances--Cornelius Nepos, Catullus, Pliny the Younger and others of later date and less renown. [Illustration: JULIET'S HOUSE.]