Road from Ferrara to Bologna--Wayside Oratories--Miserable Cultivation--Barbarism of People--Aspect of Bologna--Streets, Galleries, and Churches of its Interior--Decay of Art--San Petronio--View of Plain from Hill behind Bologna--Tyranny of Government--Night Arrests--Ruinous Taxation--Departure from Bologna--Brigands--The Apennines--Storm among these Mountains--Two Russian Travellers--Dinner at the Tuscan Frontier--Summit of the Pass--Halt for the Night at a Country Inn--The Hostess and her Company--Supper--Resume Journey next Morning--First Sight of Florence. On the morrow at ten I took my departure for Bologna. It was sweet to exchange the sickly faces and unnatural silence of the city for the bright sun and the living trees. The road was good,--so very good, that it took me by surprise. It was not in keeping with the surrounding barbarism. Instead of a hard-bottomed, macadamized highway, which traversed the plain in a straight line, bordered by noble trees, I should have expected to find in this region of mouldering towns and neglected fields, a narrow, winding, rutted path, ploughed by torrents and obstructed by boulders; and so, I am sure, I should have done, had any of the native governments of Italy had the making of this road. But it had been designed and executed by Napoleon; and hence its excellence. His roads alone would have immortalized him. They remain, after all his victories have perished, to attest his genius. Would that that genius had been turned to the arts of peace! Conquerors would do well to ponder the eulogium pronounced on a humble tailor who built a bridge out of his savings,--that the world owed more to the scissors of that man than to the sword of some conquerors.