Ravenna has so much that is rare and precious to show us that few among the many who spend a day or two within her walls have the inclination to explore the melancholy marshes in which she stands. No doubt most of us drive out to S. Apollinare in Classe, but the road thither does not encourage a further journey, for it is rude and rough and the country over which it passes is among the most featureless in Italy. Nevertheless he does himself a wrong who leaves Ravenna for good without having spent one day at any rate in the Pineta which, ruined though it now be, is still one of the loveliest and most mysterious places in the Romagna. But lovely though it is, and full of memories, what can be said of this vast ruined forest of stone pines with its mystery of mere and fen, its coolness and shadow, its astonishing silence? Only this I think, that if once you find it, nothing else in Ravenna will seem half so precious as this green wood. You will love it always and for its own sake more than anything else in Ravenna, and in this you will not be alone; every one who has come to it these thousand years has felt the same, Dante, Boccaccio, Byron, Carducci, the Pineta knows the footsteps of them all and they seem to haunt it still. Dante would seem to have loved it best in the morning; out of it he conjures his _Paradiso Terrestre_ in the twenty-eighth canto of the _Purgatorio_: "Through that celestial forest, whose thick shade With lively greenness the new-springing day Attemper'd, eager now to roam, and search Its limits round, forthwith I left the bank; Along the champain leisurely my way Pursuing, o'er the ground, that on all sides Delicious odour breathed. A pleasant air That intermitted never, never veer'd, Smote on my temples, gently as a wind Of softest influence, at which the sprays, Obedient all, lean'd trembling to that part Where first the holy mountain casts his shade, Yet were not so disordered, but that still Upon their top the feathered quiristers Applied their wonted art, and with full joy Welcomed those hours of prime, and warbled shrill Amid the leaves that to their jocund lays Kept tenour; even as from branch to branch Along the piny forests on the shore Of Chiassi rolls the gathering melody When Eolus hath from his cavern loosed The dripping south. Already had my steps, Though slow, so far into that ancient wood Transported me, I could not ken the place Where I had entered; when, behold, my path Was bounded by a rill which to the left With little rippling waters bent the grass That issued from its brink. On earth no wave How clear so'er that would not seem to have Some mixture in itself, compared with this Transpicuous clear; yet darkly on it rolled, Darkly beneath perpetual gloom, which ne'er Admits or sun or moon-light there to shine."