e_ for Rome.

CHAPTER VIII.

Pisa--Hotel Victoria--Pisan weather--The poet Shelley--Historic Pisa
--Lung 'Arno--San Stefano di Canalia--Cathedral--Baptistery--Leaning
Tower--Campo Santo--The divine angels--The great chain of Pisa--Leghorn
--Smollett's grave--Poste-restante--A sweet thing in Beggars--Ugolino's
Tower--Departure for Rome.

We arrived at Pisa towards evening, and got into comfortable quarters at
the Hotel Victoria, a quiet house, reminding us of the Swiss hotels in
its style of entertainment. We soon had a nice little dinner set before
us, and were hungry enough to do justice to it.

The next morning we found to our great disgust that it rained heavily.
Our hotel was close to the river Arno, the river of Dante and Petrarch.
It looked sandy and muddy as it flowed rapidly by. There were several
gondola-like barges being towed by ropes on the other side, and
Shelley's lines occurred to my memory, more in association of the poet
with the place, than from the poetical look of the river itself--

"Within the surface of the fleeting river
The wrinkled image of the city lay
Immovably unquiet, and for ever
It trembles, but never fades away."

It is impossible to visit Pisa without recalling touching memories of
the unfortunate and gifted poet who passed the last few years of his
stormy life here, and only left it in the summer of 1823 for the Casa
Magni, on the wild sea coast between Lerici and San Terenzio. It was
from here that the _Don Juan_ set out on its fatal trip to Leghorn one
July morning--never to return.

Pisa is another very ancient city. It was founded about six centuries
B.C., and was one of the twelve Etruscan cities. Like Genoa, it
underwent many changes and vicissitudes, one of the greatest of which
was the unexpected receding of the sea for some three or four miles,
changing it from a busy, prosperous port to a comparatively unimportant
inland town. It is still, however, much respected on account of its
ancient greatness and learning, and is generally looked upon as the
cradle of Italian art. In these latter days it is again becoming wealthy
and enterprising. It is considered a remarkably good place for
consumptive invalids. A fellow-traveller informed me that a friend of
his had lived here for many years with _both lungs gone_! The climate is
exceedingly mild, almost humid from the quantity of rain that falls:
there is said to be, o