oved to assume. They
were to be seen a good deal on the promenades outside the walls, where
the Paduan ladies are driven in their carriages in the afternoon, and
where one sees the blood-horses and fine equipages for which Padua is
famous. There used once to be races in the Prato della Valle, after the
Italian notion of horse-races; but these are now discontinued, and there
is nothing to be found there but the statues of scholars and soldiers
and statesmen, posted in a circle around the old race-course. If you
strolled thither about dusk on such a day as this, you might see the
statues unbend a little from their stony rigidity, and in the failing
light nod to each other very pleasantly through the trees. And if you
stayed in Padua over night, what could be better to-morrow morning than
a stroll through the great Botanical Garden,--the oldest botanical
garden in the world,--the garden which first received in Europe the
strange and splendid growths of our hemisphere,--the garden where Doctor
Rappaccini doubtless found the germ of his mortal plant?

On the whole, I believe I would rather go this moment to Padua than to
Lowell or Lawrence, or even to Worcester; and as to the disadvantage of
having seen Padua, I begin to think the whole place has now assumed so
fantastic a character in my mind that I am almost as well qualified to
write of it as if I had merely dreamed it.

The day that we first visited the city was very rainy, and we spent most
of the time in viewing the churches. These, even after the churches of
Venice, one finds rich in art and historic interest, and they in no
instance fall into the maniacal excesses of the Renaissance to which
some of the temples of the latter city abandon themselves. Their
architecture forms a sort of border-land between the Byzantine of Venice
and the Lombardic of Verona. The superb domes of St. Anthony's emulate
those of St. Mark's, and the porticos of other Paduan churches rest
upon the backs of bird-headed lions and leopards that fascinate with
their mystery and beauty.

It was the wish to see the attributive Giottos in the Chapter which drew
us first to St. Anthony's, and we saw them with the satisfaction
naturally attending the contemplation of frescos discovered only since
1858, after having been hidden under plaster and whitewash for many
centuries; but we could not believe that Giotto's fame was destined to
gain much by their rescue from oblivion. They are in no wise to be