s, and fields, and gardens,
between agreeable villas or groves of cypress. The dress of the people
is picturesque; their habits are cheerful, and their manners kindly.

Besides all this, there is scarcely a city, even in Italy, to which we
attach a more romantic interest than to Verona. Under its ancient Gothic
name of Bern, it is the scene of many of the Teutonic tales which are
woven into the Book of Heroes, and the song of the Nibelung. The poets
and novelists of the middle ages have also laid the scenes of many of
their enchanting tales in this beautiful city; and our own Shakspeare
has brought Verona so home to every English reader, that we feel almost
to have a right of possession in the place.

Originally a city of the Rhetians, Verona became a Roman colony about
the time of Julius Caeser, who caused its inhabitants to be enrolled
among the number of Roman citizens. Its most flourishing periods under
the empire were the reigns of Vaspasian and of Hadrian, when various
temples, and other public buildings, of which some fragments still
remain, were erected, and the magnificent ampitheatre, which is still
used for scenic representations, was built. It was under the reign of
Trajan, that Verona received its first Christian Bishop, Euprepius; and
in that of Dioclesian, that its martyrs, Fermus and Rusticus, suffered.
The conquest of the city by Constantine, and the fearful battle fought
in its immediate neighbourhood between Stilicho and Attila, produced
little change in the condition of Verona, which continued to partake of
the general fortunes of the empire, until the reign of Theodoric the
Great.

After the invasion of Italy by the Ostrogoths, under Theodoric, and his
victory over Odoacer, which ensured him the sovereignty of the country,
from the Alps to Calabria, about the year 493, he fixed his capital at
Verona, or, as it was called by the Goths, Bern:[1] there he built a
magnificent palace, which communicated, by a continued portico,
with principal gate of the city. He renewed the Roman walls and
fortifications, repaired the aqueducts, and constructed commodious
baths and other public buildings.[2]

[1] See Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," chap. 39, for the general
conduct of Theodoric in Italy.

[2] Tiraboschi, book i.

After the death of Theodoric, A.D. 526, in the 37th year of his reign,
the disturbed reigns of his daughter Amalasontha and her son Athalaric
were an earnest of the distract