ard Treviso, intending to visit Possagno, the birthplace of
Canova, on our way. The road to the latter place passes through a
beautiful country, that gently undulates on either hand, till in the
distance it rises into pleasant hills and green mountain-heights.
Possagno itself lies upon the brink of a declivity, down the side of
which drops terrace after terrace, all planted with vines and figs and
peaches, to a water-course below. The ground on which the village is
built, with its quaint and antiquated stone cottages, slopes gently
northward, and on a little rise upon the left hand of us coming from
Bassano, we saw that stately religious edifice with which Canova has
honored his humble birthplace. It is a copy of the Pantheon, and it
cannot help being beautiful and imposing, but it would be utterly out of
place in any other than an Italian village. Here, however, it consorted
well enough with the lingering qualities of that old pagan civilization
still perceptible in Italy. A sense of that past was so strong with us,
as we ascended the broad stairway leading up the slope from the village
to the level on which the temple stands at the foot of a mountain, that
we might well have fancied we approached an altar devoted to the elder
worship: through the open doorway and between the columns of the portico
we could see the priests moving to and fro, and the voice of their
chanting came out to us like the sound of hymns to some of the deities
long disowned; and I could but recall how Padre L---- had once said to
me in Venice, "Our blessed saints are only the old gods baptized and
christened anew." Within, as without, the temple resembled the Pantheon,
but it had little to show us. The niches designed by Canova for statues
of the saints are empty yet; but there are busts by his own hand of
himself and his brother, the Bishop Canova. Among the people present was
the sculptor's niece, whom our guide pointed out to us, and who was
evidently used to being looked at. She seemed not to dislike it, and
stared back at us amiably enough, being a good-natured, plump, comely,
dark-faced lady of perhaps fifty years.

Possagno is nothing if not Canova, and our guide, a boy, knew all about
him,--how, more especially, he had first manifested his wonderful genius
by modelling a group of sheep out of the dust of the highway, and how an
Inglese, happening along in his carriage, saw the boy's work and gave
him a plateful of gold napoleons. I dare s