l. The figs on it were green, though they
hung ripe and blackening on every other tree in Arqua. Some ivy clung
to the stones, and from this and the fig-tree, as we came away, we
plucked memorial leaves, and blended them with flowers which the youth
of Arqua picked and forced upon us for remembrance.

A quaint old door opened into the little stone house, and admitted us
to a kind of wide passage-way with rooms on either side; and at the
end opposite to which we entered, another door opened upon a balcony.
From this balcony we looked down on Petrarch's garden, which,
presently speaking, is but a narrow space with more fruit than flowers
in it. Did Petrarch use to sit and meditate in this garden? For me I
should better have liked a chair on the balcony, with the further and
lovelier prospect on every hand of village-roofs, sloping hills all
gray with olives, and the broad, blue Lombard plain, sweeping from
heaven to heaven below.

The walls of the passage-way are frescoed (now very faintly) in
illustration of the loves of Petrarch and Laura, with verses from the
sonnets inscribed to explain the illustrations. In all these Laura
prevails as a lady of a singularly long waist and stiff movements, and
Petrarch, with his face tied up and a lily in his hand, contemplates
the flower in mingled botany and toothache. There is occasionally a
startling literalness in the way the painter has rendered some of
the verses. I remember with peculiar interest the illustration of a
lachrymose passage concerning a river of tears, wherein the weeping
Petrarch, stretched beneath a tree, had already started a small creek
of tears, which was rapidly swelling to a flood with the torrent from
his eyes. I attribute these frescos to a later date than that of the
poet's residence, but the portrait over the door of the bedroom inside
of the chamber, was of his own time, and taken from him--the custodian
said. As it seemed to look like all the Petrarchian portraits, I did
not remark it closely, but rather turned my attention to the walls of
the chamber, which were thickly over-scribbled with names. They were
nearly all Italian, and none English so far as I saw. This passion for
allying one's self to the great, by inscribing one's name on places
hallowed by them, is certainly very odd; and (I reflected as I added
our names to the rest) it is, without doubt, the most impertinent and
idiotic custom in the world. People have thus written themselves down,