Underneath the gallery was a school of boys, whom, as we entered, we heard humming over the bitter honey which childhood is obliged to gather from the opening flowers of orthography. When we passed out, the master gave these poor busy bees an atom of holiday, and they all swarmed forth together to look at the strangers. The teacher was a long, lank man, in a black threadbare coat, and a skull-cap,--exactly like the schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village." We made a pretence of asking him our way somewhere, and went wrong, and came by accident upon a wide, flat space, bare as a brick-yard, beside which was lettered on a fragment of the old city wall, "Giuoco di Palla." It was evidently the play-ground of the whole city, and it gave us a pleasanter idea of life in Bassano than we had yet conceived, to think of its entire population playing ball there in the spring afternoons. We respected Bassano as much for this as for her diligent remembrance of her illustrious dead, of whom she has very great numbers. It appeared to us that nearly every other house bore a tablet announcing that "Here was born," or "Here died," some great or good man of whom no one out of Bassano ever heard. There is enough celebrity there to supply the world; but as laurel is a thing that grows anywhere, I covet rather from Bassano the magnificent ivy that covers the portions of her ancient wall yet standing. The wall, where visible, is seen to be of a pebbly rough-cast, but it is clothed almost from the ground in glossy ivy, that glitters upon it like chain-mail upon the vast shoulders of some giant warrior. The bed of the moat is turned into a lovely promenade, bordered by quiet villas, with shepherds and shepherdesses carved in marble on their gates. Where the wall is built to the verge of the high ground on which the city stands, there is a swift descent to the wide valley of the Brenta, waving in corn and vines and tobacco.