you knock first at the door of a
blacksmith, who calls a species of custodian, and, when this
latter has opened a gate in a wall, you follow him up-stairs into a
market-garden.

In one corner, and standing in a leafy and grassy shelter somewhat
away from the vegetables, is the poet's tomb, which has a kind of
claim to genuineness by virtue of its improbable appearance. It looks
more like a bake-oven than even the Pompeian tombs; the masonry is
antique, and is at least in skillful imitation of the fine Roman work.
The interior is a small chamber with vaulted or wagon-roof ceiling,
under which a man may stand upright, and at the end next the street
is a little stone commemorating the place as Virgil's tomb, which was
placed there by the Queen of France in 1840, and said by the custodian
(a singularly dull ass) to be an exact copy of the original, whatever
the original may have been. This guide could tell us nothing more
about it, and was too stupidly honest to pretend to know more. The
laurel planted by Petrarch at the door of the tomb, and renewed
in later times by Casimir Delavigne, has been succeeded by a third
laurel. The present twig was so slender, and looked so friendless and
unprotected, that even enthusiasm for the memory of two poets could
not be brought to rob it of one of its few leaves; and we contented
ourselves with plucking some of the grass and weeds that grew
abundantly on the roof of the tomb.

There was a dusty quiet within the tomb, and a grassy quiet without,
that pleased exceedingly; but though the memories of the place were
so high and epic, it only suggested bucolic associations, and, sunken
into that nook of hill-side verdure, made me think of a spring-house
on some far-away Ohio farm; a thought that, perhaps, would not have
offended the poet, who loved and sang of humble country things, and,
drawing wearily to his rest here, no doubt turned and remembered
tenderly the rustic days before the excellent veterans of Augustus
came to exile him from his father's farm at Mantua, and banish him to
mere glory. But I believe most travellers have much nobler sensations
in Virgil's tomb, and there is a great deal of testimony borne to
their lofty sentiments on every scribbleable inch of its walls. Valery
reminded me that Boccaccio, standing near it of old, first felt his
fate decided for literature. Did he come there, I wonder, with poor
Fiammetta, and enter the tomb with her tender hand in his, before e