e specimen of Gothic: the exterior is Greek, Gothic, and Saracenic
jumbled together in vile taste: it contains nothing very interesting.
The palace is like other palaces, very fine and so forth; and only
remarkable for not containing one good picture, or one valuable work
of art.

_Pisa, April 25._--Pisa has a look of elegant tranquillity, which is
not exactly _dulness_, and pleases me particularly: if the thought of
its past independence, the memory of its once proud name in arts,
arms, and literature, came across the mind, it is not accompanied by
any painful regret caused by the sight of present misery and
degradation, but by that philosophic melancholy with which we are used
to contemplate the mutability of earthly greatness.

The Duomo, the Baptistry, the Leaning Tower, and the Campo Santo,
stand altogether in a fine open elevated part of the city. The Duomo
is a magnificent edifice in bad taste. The interior, with its noble
columns of oriental granite, is grand, sombre, and very striking. As
to the style of architecture, it would be difficult to determine what
name to give it: it is not Greek, nor Gothic, nor Saxon, and exhibits
a strange mixture of Pagan and Christian ornaments, not very
unfrequent in Italian churches. The Leaning Tower should be
contemplated from the portico of the church to heighten its effect:
when the perpendicular column cuts it to the eye like a plumb line,
the obliquity appears really terrific.

The Campo Santo is an extraordinary place: it affects the mind like
the cloisters of one of our Gothic cathedrals which it resembles in
effect. Means have lately been taken to preserve the singular frescos
on the walls, which for five hundred years have been exposed to the
open air.

I remarked the tomb of that elegant fabulist Pignotti; the last
personage of celebrity buried in the Campo Santo.

The university of Pisa is no longer what it was when France and Venice
had nearly gone to war about one of its law professors, and its
colleges ranked next to those of Padua: it has declined in fame, in
riches, and in discipline. The Botanic Garden was a few years ago the
finest in all Europe, and is still maintained with great cost and
care: it contains a lofty magnolia, the stem of which is as bulky as a
good sized tree: the gardener told us rather poetically, that when in
blossom it perfumed the whole city of Pisa.

_Leghorn, April 26._--So different from any thing we have yet seen in
Italy! bus