We made an excursion or so, but not with any avidity; the sea was too good to leave, and it was the sea that we had come all this way to enjoy, as one cannot enjoy it at home except on days that are so few and far between as by their very rarity to make for misgivings rather than delight. It was also so hot that to be in the train at all was a distress, while to be in the train in the middle hours was martyrdom; and to be in a strange town in the middle hours was discomfort too. But as it seemed wrong to be so near Ravenna and not see it, we made a great effort and were away before seven one lovely morning. It was a day of interesting sights and associations; but how the call of the placid, wet exhilarating Adriatic sounded in our ears the while! Ravenna has had two immense losses: first the sea, which gradually withdrew from the town centuries ago; and then the Pinetum, which, after centuries of existence, was burned down not many years since. The nearness of such a forest must have both sweetened and cooled the city; to-day its heat can be pitiless. The two lodestars of Ravenna are the exile poets Dante and Byron--but Dante, of course, far outshines that other. Byron is an accident here; Dante gives Ravenna most of its lustre, for here he made his home for many years after Florence turned him forth; here he wrote most of the "Divine Comedy"; here he died. We saw his tomb, and afterwards we saw his bones in their wooden coffin in the library of the old Camaldulensian monastery of Classe, now a civic building with an immense collection of Dante literature. Here, too, we were shown by the custodian a little illuminated Book of Hours that belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and is as pretty as a Kate Greenaway calendar and indeed rather like one; but how it came to be at Ravenna, I cannot say. And where it ought to be, were there a general restitution of foreign treasures to their rightful situations, I cannot say either. One other thing we saw in this museum--the bedstead on which Garibaldi's wife, Anita, died in 1849, during the flight from the Austrians; and a few minutes later we saw a little company of Garibaldi's veterans, lame and decrepit, place a wreath on the patriot's statue, just by the Hotel Byron, amid apathy which would be striking anywhere, but among Italians was astounding. Not a soul but ourselves and some errand boys watched or followed.