aits of the Doges (and Marino Faliero's black curtain), is
splendid, and adorned with paintings of Paul Veronese, Bassano,
Tintoret, and Palma Giovane. At twelve o'clock I got into the
gondola and left Venice without the least regret or desire to
return there. The banks of the Brenta would be very gay if the
villas were inhabited, but most of them are shut up, like the
palaces at Venice. There is one magnificent building, formerly a
Pisani palace, which belongs to the Viceroy, the Archduke Rainer.

Padua is a large and rather gloomy town. They say it is beginning
to flourish, having been ruined by the French, and that, since
their downfall, the population has increased immensely. The
University contains 1,400 scholars. It contained 52,500 in the
time of the French, and in the great days of Padua 18,000. I went
to look at the outside of the building, which is not large, but
handsome. The old palace of the Carraras is half ruined, and what
remains is tenanted by the commandant of the place. The old Sala
di Giustizia, which, is very ancient, is now a lumber room, and
they were painting scenes in it. Still it is undamaged, and they
call it the finest room in Europe, and perhaps it is. It is 300
feet long, 100 wide, and 100 high. At one end of it is the
monument and bust of Livy, the latter of which they pretend to
have found here; they also talk of his house and the marbles,
&c., that have been dug up in it, which they may believe who can.
The Cathedral has nothing to boast of, except that Petrarch was
one of its canons, and in it is his bust, put up by a brother
canon. I had not time to go to the churches.

The whole road from Fusina to this place is as flat as the paper
on which I am writing. I really don't believe there is a
molehill, but it is extremely gay from the variety of habitations
and the prodigious cultivation of all sorts. Vicenza is one of
the most agreeable towns I ever saw, and I would rather live in
it than in any place I have seen since Rome. It is spacious and
clean, full of Palladio's architecture; besides the Palazzo della
Ragione, a very fine building, there are twenty-two palaces built
by him in various parts of the town. They show the house in which
he lived. From the Church of Santa Maria del Monte, a mile from
the town, there is a magnificent view, and the town itself, under
the mountains of the Tyrol, and the end of a vast cultivated
plain, looks very inviting and gay. There is a Campo di Mart