DEPARTURE FROM VENICE--A SUNSET SCENE--PADUA--SPLENDID HOTEL--MANNERS OF THE COUNTRY--VICENZA--MIDNIGHT--LADY RETURNING FROM A PARTY--VERONA--JULIET'S TOMB--THE TOMB OF THE CAPULETS--THE TOMBS OF THE SCALIGERS--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA--A WALKING CHRONICLE--PALACE OF THE CAPULETS--ONLY COOL PLACE IN AN ITALIAN CITY--BANQUETING HALL OF THE CAPULETS--FACTS AND FICTION, ETC.
We pushed from the post-office stairs in a gondola with six oars at sunset. It was melancholy to leave Venice. A hasty farewell look, as we sped down the grand canal, at the gorgeous palaces, even less famous than beautiful--a glance at the disappearing Rialto, and we shot out into the Giudecca in a blaze of sunset glory. Oh how magnificently looked Venice in that light--rising behind us from the sea--all her superb towers and palaces, turrets and spires, fused into gold; and the waters about her, like a mirror of stained glass, without a ripple!
An hour and a half of hard rowing brought us to the nearest land. You should go to Venice to know how like a dream a reality may be. You will find it difficult to realize, when you smell once more the fresh earth and grass and flowers, and walk about and see fields and mountains, that this city upon the sea exists out of the imagination. You float to it and about it and from it, in their light craft, so aerially, that it seems a vision.
With a drive of two or three hours, half twilight, half moonlight, we entered _Padua_. It was too late to see the portrait of Petrarch, and I had not time to go to his tomb at Arqua, twelve miles distant, so, musing on Livy and Galileo, to both of whom Padua was a home, I inquired for a _café_. A new one had lately been built in the centre of the town, quite the largest and most thronged I ever saw. Eight or ten large, high-roofed halls were open, and filled with tables, at which sat more beauty and fashion than I supposed all Padua could have mustered. I walked through one after another, without finding a seat, and was about turning to go out, and seek a place of less pretension, when an elderly lady, who sat with a party of seven, eating ices, rose, with Italian courtesy, and offered me a chair at their table. I accepted it, and made the acquaintance of eight as agreeable and polished people as it has been my fortune to meet. We parted as if we had known each other as many weeks as minutes. I mention it as an instance of the manners of the country.