stantly there was a general rush at the document; and fearing
that it should be torn in pieces, which would have been an awkward
affair for me, seeing without it it would be impossible to get forward,
and nearly as impossible to get back, I surrendered it to the first
speaker, that it might be passed round, and all might gratify their
curiosity or idolatry with the sight of a name which abroad is but a
synonym for "England." After making the tour of the _diligence_, the
passport was handed out to the gendarme, who, feeling no such intense
desire as did the passengers to see the famous characters, had waited
good-naturedly all the while. The man surveyed with grim complacency a
name which was then in no pleasant odour with the statesmen and
functionaries of Austria. In return he gave me a paper containing
"permission to sojourn for a few hours in Verona," with its co-relative
"permission to depart." I felt proud of my country, which could as
effectually protect me at the gates of Verona as on the shores of the
Forth.

CHAPTER XIV.

FROM VERONA TO VENICE.

Interior of Verona--End of World seemingly near in Italy--The Monks
and the Classics--A Cast-Iron Revolutionist--A Beautiful
Glimpse--Railway Carriages--Railway Company--Tyrolese Alps--Dante's
Patmos--Vicenza--Padua--The Lagunes--The Omnibus or
Gondola--Silence of City--Sail through the Canals--Charon and his
Boat--Piazza of Saint Mark.

The gates of Verona opened, and the enchantment was gone. He who would
carry away the idea of a magnificent city, which the exterior of Verona
suggests, must go round it, not through it. The first step within its
walls is like the stroke of an enchanter's wand. The villa-begemmed
city, with its ramparts and its cypress-trees, takes flight, and there
rises before the traveller an old ruinous town, with dirty streets and a
ragged and lazy population. It reminds one of what he meets in tales of
eastern romance, where young and beautiful princesses are all at once
transformed by malignant genuises into old and withered hags.

In truth, on entering an Italian town one feels as if the last trumpet
were about to sound. The world, and all that is in it, seems old--very
old. Man is old, his dwellings are old, his works are old, and the very
earth seems old. All seems to betoken that it is the last age, and that
the world is winding up its business, preparatory to the final closing
of the drama. Commerc