d fortune to meet an intelligent and estimable
companion in a foreign land, I leaped into a gondola, and glided away,
leaving Venice sitting in silent melancholy beauty amid her tideless
seas.

Traversing again the long bridge over the Lagunes, and the flat country
beyond, covered with memorials of decay in the shape of dilapidated
villas, and crossing the full-volumed Brenta, rolling on within its
lofty embankments, I sighted the fine Tyrolean Alps on the right, and,
after a run of twenty-four miles, the gray towers of Padua, at about a
mile's distance from the railway, on the left.

Poor Padua! Who could enter it without weeping almost. Of all the
wretched and ruinous places I ever saw, this is the most wretched and
ruinous,--hopelessly, incurably ruinous. Padua does, indeed, look
imposing at a little distance. Its fine dome, its numerous towers, the
large vine-stocks which are rooted in its soil, the air of vast
fertility which is spread over the landscape, and the halo of former
glory which, cloud-like, rests above it, consort well with one's
preconceived ideas of this once illustrious seat of learning, which
even the youth of our own land were wont to frequent; but enter
it,--alas the dismal sight!--ruins, filth, ignorance, poverty, on every
hand. The streets are narrow and gloomy, from being lined with heavy and
dark arcades; the houses, which are large, and bear marks of former
opulence, are standing in many instances untenanted. Not a few stately
mansions have been converted into stables, or carriers' sheds, or are
simply naked walls, which the dogs of the city, or other creatures, make
their den. The inhabitants, pale, emaciated, and wrapt in huge cloaks,
wander through the streets like ghosts. Were Padua a heap of ruins,
without a single human being on or near its site, its desolation would
be less affecting. An unbearable melancholy sat down upon me the moment
I entered it, and the recollection oppresses me at the distance of three
years.

In the midst of all this ruin and poverty, there rise I know not how
many duomos and churches, with fine cupolas and towers, as if they meant
to mock the misery upon which they look. They are the repositories of
vast wealth, in the shape of silver lamps, votive offerings, paintings,
and marbles. To appropriate a penny of that treasure in behalf of the
wretched beings who swarm unfed and untaught in their neighbourhood,
would bring down upon Padua the terrible ire of thei