Zeno is at the head of the churches: there
is nothing but what is ancient, and nothing new or incongruous offends
the eye. The Cathedral still preserves one of Titian's most precious
works. In the portico are two figures in high relief, of white marble:
on the sword of one is the word Durindarda; is this the effigy of
Charlemagne's Orlando? The ancient church of San Fermo, restored in
1319, offers some of the earliest pictures after the first dawn of the
revival of painting, by Stefano da Zevio. To the church of St. George,
beyond the Adige, one of the great works of Paolo Veronese, which do so
much honour to himself and to his native city, has been restored, after
having been carried to Paris. Indeed, there is not one of the many
churches of Verona which is not interesting on account of its antiquity,
the works of art contained in it, or its story; and the public squares
and lordly palaces, and the towers that once served as watch-towers to
the proud nobles who guarded them, all force the spectator to look back
with wonder and admiration to the times when a sentiment of political
independence could produce such monuments of glory, even in the midst
of war and in a petty state.

* * * * *

The preceding extract has occupied so much space, that we can give
little more than an enumeration of the other contents of the _Gem_.
Among the prose, we have been most pleased with Walter Errick, a
touching tale, by the Hon. Mrs. Norton, (author of Sorrows of Rosalie;)
and the Mining Curate, by Mr. Carne; both of which, however, terminate
somewhat too gloomily. Next is the Man and the Lioness, by Lord
Nugent--not a "Lioness" of Exeter 'Change, but a cook and housekeeper
to a country gentleman, by all around called _the Lioness_ a name,
"in the strictest sense, _de guerre_." Knowing the noble author's
_forte_ in gastronomy, we are almost induced to think the cook,
or _Lioness_ a portrait from life. With respect to the name, his
lordship observes "it might have had some reference to those ample and
bushy ringlets, of a colour which by the friends of the wearer, is
generally called bright auburn, and which, on those high days when Mrs.
Grace was wont to stalk forth from her solitude, swelled around a
sanguine countenance, in volume, in texture, and in hue, not unlike the
mane of that awful animal." To our view, Mrs. Grace is a sort of Mrs.
Subtle, but who, with better luck than the housekeeper in the pla