its only
guests were centaurs on their travels.

From the Museo Civico, whither we repaired first in the morning, and
where there are some beautiful Montagnas, and an assortment of good
and bad works by other masters, we went to the Campo Santo, which is
worthy to be seen, if only because of the beautiful Laschi monument by
Vela, one of the greatest modern sculptors. It is nothing more than
a very simple tomb, at the door of which stands a figure in
flowing drapery, with folded hands and uplifted eyes in an attitude
exquisitely expressive of grief. The figure is said to be the portrait
statue of the widow of him within the tomb, and the face is very
beautiful. We asked if the widow was still young, and the custodian
answered us in terms that ought to endear him to all women, if not
to our whole mortal race,--"Oh quite young, yet. She is perhaps fifty
years old."

After the Campo Santo one ought to go to that theatre which Palladio
built for the representation of classic tragedy, and which is perhaps
the perfectest reproduction of the Greek theatre in the world. Alfieri
is the only poet of modern times, whose works have been judged worthy
of this stage, and no drama has been given on it since 1857, when the
"Oedipus Tyrannus" of Sophocles was played. We found it very silent
and dusty, and were much sadder as we walked through its gayly
frescoed, desolate anterooms than we had been in the Campo Santo. Here
used to sit, at coffee and bassett, the merry people who owned the now
empty seats of the theatre,--lord, and lady, and abbe--who affected
to be entertained by the scenes upon the stage. Upon my word, I
should like to know what has become, in the other world, of those poor
pleasurers of the past whose memory makes one so sad upon the scenes
of their enjoyment here! I suppose they have something quite as
unreal, yonder, to satisfy them as they had on earth, and that they
still play at happiness in the old rococo way, though it is hard to
conceive of any fiction outside of Italy so perfect and so entirely
suited to their unreality as this classic theatre. It is a Greek
theatre, for Greek tragedies; but it could never have been for
popular amusement, and it was not open to the air, though it had a
sky skillfully painted in the centre of the roof. The proscenium is a
Greek facade, in three stories, such as never was seen in Greece;
and the architecture of the three streets running back from the
proscenium, and forming th