llest and most
ruthless of these traces the city's origin, not to the unfriendly
maid, but to the Etruscan King Ocno, fixing the precise date of its
foundation at thirty years before the Trojan war, one thousand five
hundred and thirty-nine years after the creation of the world, three
hundred years before Rome, and nine hundred and fifteen years after
the flood, while Abimelech was judge in Israel. "And whoever," says
the compiler of the "Flower of the Mantuan Chroniclers" (it is a very
dry and musty flower, indeed), citing doughty authorities for all his
facts and figures,--"whoever wishes to understand this more curiously,
let him read the said authors, and he will be satisfied."

But I am as little disposed to unsettle the reader's faith in
the Virgilian tradition, as to part with my own; and I therefore
uncandidly hold back the names of the authorities cited. This
tradition was in fact the only thing concerning Mantuan history
present to my thoughts as I rode toward the city, one afternoon of a
pleasant Lombard spring; and when I came in sight of the ancient hold
of sorcery, with the languid waters of its lagoons lying sick at
its feet, I recognized at least the topographical truth of Virgil's
description. But old and mighty walls now surround the spot which
Manto found sterile and lonely in the heart of the swamp formed by the
Mincio, no longer Benaco; and the dust of the witch is multitudinously
hidden under the edifices of a city whose mighty domes, towers, and
spires make its approach one of the stateliest in the world. It is a
prospect on which you may dwell long as you draw toward the city, for
the road from the railway station winds through some two miles of flat
meadow-land before it reaches the gate of the stronghold which the
Italians call the first hope of the winner of the land, and the last
hope of the loser of Italy. Indeed, there is no haste in any of the
means of access to Mantua. It lies scarce forty miles south of Verona,
and you are three hours in journeying this distance in the placid
railway train,--a distance which Romeo, returning to Verona from his
exile in Mantua, no doubt travelled in less time. There is abundant
leisure to study the scenery on the way; but it scarcely repays the
perusal, for it lacks the beauty of the usual Lombard landscape.
The soil is red, stony, and sterile; the orchard-trees are scant and
slender, and not wedded with the caressing vines which elsewhere in
North Italy