nor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wrecks of
temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of antiquity
unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But it contains, in the
next place, what Rome does not contain--perfect examples of the great
twelfth-century Lombardic architecture, which was the root of all the
mediaeval art of Italy, without which no Giottos, no Angelicos, no
Raphaels would have been possible: it contains that architecture, not in
rude forms, but in the most perfect and loveliest types it ever
attained--contains those, not in ruins, nor in altered and hardly
decipherable fragments, but in churches perfect from porch to apse, with
all their carving fresh, their pillars firm, their joints unloosened.
Besides these, it includes examples of the great thirteenth and
fourteenth-century Gothic of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhere
unrivalled. At Rome, the Roman--at Pisa, the Lombard--architecture may
be seen in greater or in equal nobleness; but not at Rome, nor Pisa, nor
Florence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great mediaeval Gothic
like the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either less pure in type or
less lovely in completion: only at Verona may you see it in the
simplicity of its youthful power, and the tenderness of its accomplished
beauty. And Verona possesses, in the last place, the loveliest
Renaissance architecture of Italy, not disturbed by pride, nor defiled
by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment of domestic service, serenity
of effortless grace, and modesty of home seclusion; its richest work
given to the windows that open on the narrowest streets and most silent
gardens. All this she possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as
assuredly exists nowhere else in the habitable globe--a wild Alpine
river foaming at her feet, from whose shore the rocks rise in a great
crescent, dark with cypress, and misty with olive: illimitably, from
before her southern gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade in
golden light; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in crested
troops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness of their
snows.

77. And this is the city--such, and possessing such things as these--at
whose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought continually: three
days her towers trembled with the echo of the cannon of Arcola; heaped
pebbles of the Mincio divide her fields to this hour with lines of
broken rampart, whence th