and paid nothing
for either privilege. What wild and confused reminiscences on the
wrinkled visage we should find thereafter of the fierce republican
times, of Ecelino, of the Carraras, of the Venetian rule! And is it
not sad to think of systems and peoples all passing away, and these
ancient women lasting still, and still selling grapes in front of the
Palazzo della Ragione? What a long mortality!

The youngest of their number is a thousand years older than the
palace, which was begun in the twelfth century, and which is much the
same now as it was when first completed. I know that, if I entered it,
I should be sure of finding the great hall of the palace--the vastest
hall in the world--dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing
in it except at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden
horse of Troy, stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced
Egyptian women in basalt placed there by Belzoni.

Late in the drowsy summer afternoons I should have the Court of the
University all to myself, and might study unmolested the blazons of
the noble youth who have attended the school in different centuries
ever since 1200, and have left their escutcheons on the walls to
commemorate them. At the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools
from the court is the statue of the learned lady who was once a
professor in the University, and who, if her likeness belie not her
looks, must have given a great charm to student life in other times.
At present there are no lady professors at Padua any more than at
Harvard; and during late years the schools have suffered greatly from
the interference of the Austrian government, which frequently closed
them for months, on account of political demonstrations among the
students. But now there is an end of this and many other stupid
oppressions; and the time-honored University will doubtless regain
its ancient importance. Even in 1864 it had nearly fifteen hundred
students, and one met them everywhere under the arcades, and could
not well mistake them, with that blended air of pirate and dandy which
these studious young men loved to assume. They were to be seen a good
deal on the promenades outside the walls, where the Paduan ladies are
driven in their carriages in the afternoon, and where one sees the
blood-horses and fine equipages for which Padua is famous. There used
once to be races in the Prato della Valle, after the Italian notion of
horse-races; but these are now dis