tches, and mapped out into
innumerable rice-fields. For more than half a year it lies under
water, and during the other months exhales a pestilential vapour,
which renders it as uninhabitable as the Roman Campagna; yet in
springtime this dreary flat is even beautiful. The young blades of the
rice shoot up above the water, delicately green and tender. The
ditches are lined with flowering rush and golden flags, while white
and yellow lilies sleep in myriads upon the silent pools. Tamarisks
wave their pink and silver tresses by the road, and wherever a plot of
mossy earth emerges from the marsh, it gleams with purple orchises and
flaming marigolds; but the soil beneath is so treacherous and spongy,
that these splendid blossoms grow like flowers in dreams or fairy
stories. You try in vain to pick them; they elude your grasp, and
flourish in security beyond the reach of arm or stick.

Such is the sight of the old town of Classis. Not a vestige of the
Roman city remains, not a dwelling or a ruined tower, nothing but the
ancient church of S. Apollinare in Classe. Of all desolate buildings
this is the most desolate. Not even the deserted grandeur of S. Paolo
beyond the walls of Rome can equal it. Its bare round campanile gazes
at the sky, which here vaults only sea and plain--a perfect dome,
star-spangled like the roof of Galla Placidia's tomb. Ravenna lies low
to west, the pine-wood stretches away in long monotony to east. There
is nothing else to be seen except the spreading marsh, bounded by dim
snowy Alps and purple Apennines, so very far away that the level rack
of summer clouds seem more attainable and real. What sunsets and
sunrises that tower must see; what glaring lurid afterglows in August,
when the red light scowls upon the pestilential fen; what sheets of
sullen vapour rolling over it in autumn; what breathless heats, and
rainclouds big with thunder; what silences; what unimpeded blasts of
winter winds! One old monk tends this deserted spot. He has the huge
church, with its echoing aisles and marble columns and giddy
bell-tower and cloistered corridors, all to himself. At rare
intervals, priests from Ravenna come to sing some special mass at
these cold altars; pious folk make vows to pray upon their mouldy
steps and kiss the relics which are shown on great occasions. But no
one stays; they hurry, after muttering their prayers, from the
fever-stricken spot, reserving their domestic pieties and customary
devotions fo