continued, and there is nothing to
be found there but the statues of scholars and soldiers and statesmen,
posted in a circle around the old race-course. If you strolled thither
about dusk on such a day as this, you might see the statues unbend a
little from their stony rigidity, and in the failing light nod to each
other very pleasantly through the trees. And if you stayed in Padua
over night, what could be better to-morrow morning than a stroll
through the great Botanical Garden,--the oldest botanical garden in
the world,--the garden which first received in Europe the strange
and splendid growths of our hemisphere,--the garden where Doctor
Rappaccini doubtless found the germ of his mortal plant?

On the whole, I believe I would rather go this moment to Padua than to
Lowell or Lawrence, or even to Worcester; and as to the disadvantage
of having seen Padua, I begin to think the whole place has now assumed
so fantastic a character in my mind that I am almost as well qualified
to write of it as if I had merely dreamed it.

The day that we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent
most of the time in viewing the churches. These, even after the
churches of Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and
they in no instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance
to which some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves.
Their architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine
of Venice and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St.
Anthony's emulate those of St. Mark's; and the porticos of other
Paduan churches rest upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards
that fascinate with their mystery and beauty.

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in the Chapter which
drew us first to St. Anthony's, and we saw them with the satisfaction
naturally attending the contemplation of frescos discovered only since
1858, after having been hidden under plaster and whitewash for many
centuries; but we could not believe that Giotto's fame was destined
to gain much by their rescue from oblivion. They are in nowise to
be compared with this master's frescos in the Chapel of the
Annunziata,--which, indeed, is in every way a place of wonder and
delight. You reach it by passing through a garden lane bordered with
roses, and a taciturn gardener comes out with clinking keys, and lets
you into the chapel, where there is nobody but Giotto and Dante, nor
seems to have been for ag