The vast structure was built of Veronese marble, and remains now much as it was two thousand

years ago.

Here also were the homes of Romeo and Juliet, and the Veronese affirm that the houses in which they lived are still there, and were pointed out to me. Their tombs were also shown me.

From Verona I went to Venice, the famed "city of the sea." All are familiar with her romantic history. The glory of the ancient republic has faded, and her high and palmy days have passed, yet she can be viewed even now only with amazement and admiration.

"A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
Around me, and a dying glory smiles

O'er the far times, when many a subject land

Looked to the winged lion's marble piles,

Where Venice sate, throned on her hundred isles."

Poetry unites with history and romance to highten the charm that surrounds Venice. Who can behold the Rialto or walk through the streets of Venice, of Shylock and Othello of Portia and Desdemona and not thrill with pleasurable fancies?

Here the Italian scenes and characters described by Shakespeare, rise in vivid reality, and add a charm to her deserted palaces and departed glories. Rogers describes Venice charmingly :

"There is a glorious city in the sea

The sea is in the broad and narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt sea-weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.

No track of men, no foot-steps to and fro,
Lead to her gates. The path lies o'er the sea,
Invincible; and from the land we went,
As to a floating city-steering in,

And gliding up her streets as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently-by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statutes ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile in more than eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;

The fronts of some, though time has shattered them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,

As though the wealth within them had run o'er."

Venice might even be something yet, but for the heavy weight of the iron yoke of Austria. Her marble palaces, however, are now hotels, warehouses, and soldiers' barracks.

St. Marc's Place is conspicuous among the beauties of Venice. Surrounding this square is the celebrated Cathedral of St. Marc, the Palace

of the Doges, the Venician Tower, and other stately marble structures, of the Grecian style of architecture, reared in the prosperous days of

the Republic, and filled with many noble specimens of the Venecian arts. A number of her treasures have been removed to Vienna and other European capitals, yet the galleries of the Doge's Palace contain many pictures of great merit. The churches of Venice are rich and elegant, but comparatively deserted. Her wharves and harbor, once crowded with ships, bearing home the wealth of the world, are now occupied by Gondolas, and the commerce of the Adriatic has been concentrated at Triest and other ports more favored, and

Her thirteen hundred years of freedom done,
Sinks, like a sea-weed, into whence she rose.”

I visited Padua, the seat of Italian literature, and Ferrara, and Bologna, old, degenerate capitals of Central Italy, on my way to "Florence the Fair."

To-day has been a gala day with the Florentines, in taking down the flags of the provisional

government, and hoisting those of Sardinia and Parma, and declaring for Victor Emanuel, amid the booming of cannon and general rejoicing, in which I heartily joined, and hope and believe there is a better day dawning for Italy.

LETTER III.

Rome, October, 1859.

DEAR B.

My expectation was to have written again before leaving Florence, but I failed, and yet to pass unnoticed a place so conspicuous in the history of the past, would be doing violence to our compact. Florence was one of the strongholds of early republican freedom, and the birthplace of modern Astronomy. There the starry Gallileo, with his wooden tube, began to unfold the beauties of the wonder world beyond us, and to demonstrate the true theory of the solar system. There Dante and Tasso remodeled the Italian language, and sung its harmony in undying verse. There Michael Angelo, her noblest son, chiseled out for himself a fame as eternal as the marble that shadows it forth. And her greatest genius, the immortal Raphael, has left