ent
gallery of paintings entirely devoted to the works of Jacopo da Ponte,
and his four sons, who are here to be seen to better advantage than
anywhere else. As few strangers visit Bassano, the gallery is little
frequented. It is in charge of a very strict old man, who will not
allow people to look at the pictures till he has shown them the
adjoining cabinet of geological specimens. It is in vain that you
assure him of your indifference to these scientific _seccature_; he is
deaf and you are not suffered to escape a single fossil. He asked us a
hundred questions, and understood nothing in reply, insomuch that when
he came to his last inquiry, "Have the Protestants the same God as the
Catholics?" we were rather glad that he should be obliged to settle
the fact for himself.

Underneath the gallery was a school of boys, whom as we entered we
heard humming over the bitter honey which childhood is obliged to
gather from the opening flowers of orthography. When we passed out,
the master gave these poor busy bees an atom of holiday, and they all
swarmed forth together to look at the strangers. The teacher was a
long, lank man, in a black threadbare coat, and a skull-cap--exactly
like the schoolmaster in "The Deserted Village." We made a pretense of
asking him our way to somewhere, and went wrong, and came by accident
upon a wide flat space, bare as a brick-yard, beside which was
lettered on a fragment of the old city wall, "Giuoco di Palla." It
was evidently the playground of the whole city, and it gave us a
pleasanter idea of life in Bassano than we had yet conceived, to think
of its entire population playing ball there in the spring afternoons.
We respected Bassano as much for this as for her diligent remembrance
of her illustrious dead, of whom she has very great numbers. It
appeared to us that nearly every other house bore a tablet announcing
that "Here was born," or "Here died," some great or good man of whom
no one out of Bassano ever heard. There is enough celebrity in Bassano
to supply the world; but as laurel is a thing that grows anywhere, I
covet rather from Bassano the magnificent ivy that covers the portions
of her ancient wall yet standing. The wall, where visible, is seen to
be of a pebbly rough-cast, but it is clad almost from the ground
in glossy ivy, that glitters upon it like chain-mail upon the vast
shoulders of some giant warrior. The moat beneath is turned into a
lovely promenade bordered by quiet villas