ed meadow, you come to a little blue lake,
clear, but fathomless, and to the foot of a succession of
acclivities and hills, clothed with vineyards and orchards,
rich with fir and pomegranate trees, and every sunny fruit
shrub. From the banks of the lake the road winds into the
hills, and the church of Arqua is soon seen between a cleft
where two ridges slope towards each other, and nearly inclose
the village. The houses are scattered at intervals on the
steep sides of these summits; and that of the poet is on the
edge of a little knoll overlooking two descents, and
commanding a view not only of the glowing gardens in the dales
immediately beneath, but of the wide plains, above whose low
woods of mulberry and willow thickened into a dark mass by
festoons of vines, tall single cypresses, and the spires of
towns are seen in the distance, which stretches to the mouths
of the Po and the shores of the Adriatic. The climate of these
volcanic hills is warmer, and the vintage begins a week sooner
than in the plains of Padua. Petrarch is laid, for he cannot
be said to be buried, in a sarcophagus of red marble, raised
on four pilasters on an elevated base, and preserved from an
association with meaner tombs. It stands conspicuously alone,
but will be soon overshadowed by four lately planted laurels.
Petrarch's fountain, for here every thing is Petrarch's,
springs and expands itself beneath an artificial arch, a
little below the church, and abounds plentifully, in the
driest season, with that soft water which was the ancient
wealth of the Euganean Hills. It would be more attractive,
were it not, in some seasons, beset with hornets and wasps. No
other coincidence could assimilate the tombs of Petrarch and
Archilochus. The revolutions of centuries have spared these
sequestered valleys, and the only violence which has been
offered to the ashes of Petrarch was prompted, not by hate,
but veneration. An attempt was made to rob the sarcophagus of
its treasure, and one of the arms was stolen by a Florentine
through a rent which is still visible. The injury is not
forgotten, but has served to identify the poet with the
country, where he was born, but where he would not live. A
peasant boy of Arqua being asked who Petrarch was, replied,
"that the people of the parsonage knew all about him, b