be
some account of the Roman city, as each little contadinella, remembered
it on market-days; and one might read of the terror of Attila's sack, a
little later, with the peasant-maid's personal recollections of the bold
Hunnish trooper who ate up the grapes in her basket, and kissed her
hard, round red cheeks,--for in that time she was a blooming girl,--and
paid nothing for either privilege. What wild and confused reminiscences
on the wrinkled visage we should find thereafter of the fierce
republican times, of Ecelino, of the Carraras, of the Venetian rule! And
is it not sad to think of systems and peoples all passing away, and
these ancient women lasting still, and still selling grapes in front of
the Palazzo della Ragione? What a long mortality!

The youngest of their number is a thousand years older than the palace,
which was begun in the twelfth century, and which is much the same now
as it was when first completed. I know that, if I entered it, I should
be sure of finding the great hall of the palace--the vastest hall in the
world--dim and dull and dusty and delightful, with nothing in it except
at one end Donatello's colossal marble-headed wooden horse of Troy,
stared at from the other end by the two dog-faced Egyptian women in
basalt placed there by Belzoni.

Late in the drowsy summer afternoons I should have the Court of the
University all to myself, and might study unmolested the blazons of the
noble youth who have attended the school in different centuries ever
since 1200, and have left their escutcheons on the walls to commemorate
them. At the foot of the stairway ascending to the schools from the
court is the statue of the learned lady who was once a professor in the
University, and who, if her likeness belie not her looks, must have
given a great charm to student life in other times. At present there are
no lady professors at Padua, any more than at Harvard; and during late
years the schools have suffered greatly from the interference of the
Austrian government, which frequently closed them for months, on account
of political demonstrations among the students. But now there is an end
of this and many other stupid oppressions; and the time-honored
University will doubtless regain its ancient importance. Even in 1864 it
had nearly fifteen hundred students, and one met them everywhere under
the arcades, and could not well mistake them, with that blended air of
pirate and dandy which these studious young men l