one; and I should not have left it so
soon, but in compassion to his health, which our company was more likely
to injure than assist. He asked me, if I did not find _Padua la dotta_ a
very stinking nasty town? but added, that literature and dirt had long
been intimately acquainted, and that this city was commonly called among
the Italians, _"Porcil de Padua," Padua the pig-stye._

Fire is supposed to be the greatest purifier, and Padua has gone through
that operation twice completely, being burned the first time by Attila;
after which, Narses the famous eunuch rebuilt and settled it in the year
558, if my information is good: but after her protector's death, the
Longobards burned her again, and she lay in ashes till Charlemagne
restored her to more than original beauty. Under Otho she, like many
other cities of Italy, was governed by her own laws, and remained a
republic till the year 1237, when she received the German yoke,
afterwards broken by the Scaligers; nor was their treacherous
assassination followed by less than the loss both of Verona and this
city, which was found in possession of the Emperor Maximilian some years
after: but when the State of Venice recovered their dominion over it in
1409, they fortified it so strongly that the confederate princes united
in the league of Cambray assaulted it in vain.

Santa Giustina's church is the most beautiful place of worship I have
ever yet seen; so regularly, so uniformly noble, uncrowded with figures
too: the entrance strikes you with its simple grandeur, while the small
chapels to the right and left hand are kept back behind a colonade of
pillars, and do not distract attention and create confusion of ideas,
as do the numerous cupolas of St. Anthony's more magnificent but less
pleasing structure. The high altar here at Santa Giustina's church
stands at the end, and greatly increases the effect on entering, which
always suffers when the length is broken. Nothing, however, is to be
perfect in this world, and Paul Veronese's fine view of the suffering
martyr has not size enough for the place; and is beside crowded with
small unconsequential figures, which cannot be distinguished at a
distance. Some carvings round the altar, representing, in wooden
bas-reliefs, the history of the Old and New Testament, are admirable in
their kind; and I am told that the organ on which Bertoni, a blind
nephew of Ferdinand, our well-known composer, played to entertain us, is
one of the fi