d earth brought from Jerusalem; and that under their serene
protection I should be forever secure from being in any way exhumed
and utilized by the ruthless hand of Progress.

However, as I said, this is a mere personal preference, and other old
cities might feel differently. Indeed, though disposed to condole with
Ferrara upon the fact of her having become part of modern Italy, I
could not deny, on better acquaintance with her, that she was still
almost entirely of the past. She has certainly missed that ideal
perfection of non-existence under the Popes which I have just
depicted, but she is practically almost as profoundly at rest under
the King of Italy. One may walk long through the longitude and
rectitude of many of her streets without the encounter of a single
face: the place, as a whole, is by no means as lively as Pompeii,
where there are always strangers; perhaps the only cities in the world
worthy to compete with Ferrara in point of agreeable solitude are
Mantua and Herculaneum. It is the newer part of the town--the modern
quarter built before Boston was settled or Ohio was known--which is
loneliest; and whatever motion and cheerfulness are still felt in
Ferrara linger fondly about the ancient holds of life--about the
street before the castle of the Dukes, and in the elder and narrower
streets branching away from the piazza of the Duomo, where, on market
days, there is a kind of dreamy tumult. In the Ghetto we were almost
crowded, and people wanted to sell us things, with an enterprise
that contrasted strangely with shopkeeping apathy elsewhere. Indeed,
surprise at the presence of strangers spending two days in Ferrara
when they could have got away sooner, was the only emotion which the
whole population agreed in expressing with any degree of energy, but
into this they seemed to throw their whole vitality. The Italians are
everywhere an artless race, so far as concerns the gratification of
their curiosity, from which no consideration of decency deters them.
Here in Ferrara they turned about and followed us with their eyes,
came to windows to see us, lay in wait for us at street-corners, and
openly and audibly debated whether we were English or German. We might
have thought this interest a tribute to something peculiar in our
dress or manner, had it not visibly attended other strangers who
arrived with us. It rose almost into a frenzy of craving to know more
of us all, when on the third day the whole city assem