ace once flooded
for naval games. The poor plaster statues stand naked and forlorn amid
the ruin of which they are part; and the great stage, from which
the curtain has rotted away, yawns dark and empty before the empty
auditorium.

DUCAL MANTUA.

In that desperate depth of Hell where Dante beholds the Diviners
doomed to pace with backward-twisted faces, and turn forever on the
past the rainy eyes once bent too daringly on the future, the sweet
guide of the Tuscan poet points out among the damned the daughter of a
Theban king, and discourses to his charge:--

Manto was she: through many lands she went
Seeking, and paused where I was born, at last.
Therefore I choose thou be on me intent
A little. When from life her father passed,
And they of Bacchus' city became slaves,
Long time about the world the daughter cast.
Up in fair Italy is a lake that laves
The feet of Alps that lock in Germany:
Benaco called....
And Peschiera in strong harness sits
To front the Brescians and the Bergamasques,
Where one down-curving shore the other meets.
There all the gathered waters outward flow
That may not in Benaco's bosom rest,
And down through, pastures green a river go.

* * * * *

As far as to Governo, where, its quest
Ended at last, it falls into me Po.
But far it has not sought before a plain
It finds and floods, out-creeping wide and slow
To be the steaming summer's offense and bane.
Here passing by, the fierce, unfriendly maid
Saw land in the middle of the sullen main,
Wild and unpeopled, and here, unafraid
Of human neighborhood, she made her lair,
Rested, and with her menials wrought her trade,
And lived, and left her empty body there.
Then the sparse people that were scattered near
Gathered upon that island, everywhere
Compassed about with swamps and kept from fear.
They built their city above the witch's grave,
And for her sake that first made dwelling there
The name of Mantua to their city gave.

To this account of the first settlement of Mantua Virgil adds a
warning to his charge to distrust all other histories of the city's
foundation; and Dante is so thoroughly persuaded of its truth, that
he declares all other histories shall be to him as so many lifeless
embers. Nevertheless, divers chroniclers of Mantua reject the
tradition here given as fabulous; and the carefu